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LIBRARY    OF   THE    UNIVER 


LIBRARY    OF   THE    UNIVER 


THE  DISTAFF  SEEIES 


WOMAN 

AND 

The  Higher  Education 


EDITED   BY 

ANNA  C.  BRACKETT 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
•M-paccxcin 


UNIVERSITY  ] 


Copyright,  1893,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 

All  rights  reserved. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

GENERAL  INTRODUCTION v 

Mrs.  BLANCHE  WILDER  BELLAMY. 


PREFACE ix 

Miss  ANNA  C.  BRACKETT. 

A   PLAN    FOR    IMPROVING    FEMALE    EDUCA- 
TION            1 

Mrs.  EMMA  WILLARD,  1819. 

FEMALE   EDUCATION 47 

Mrs.  EMMA  C.  EMBURY,  1831. 

THE  COLLEGIATE   EDUCATION   OF   GIRLS  .     .       65 
Prof.  MARIA  MITCHELL,  Vassar  College,  1880. 

A   NEW   KNOCK  AT  AN  OLD   DOOR    ....       79 
Mrs.  LUCIA  GILBERT  RUNKLE,  1883. 

A  REVIEW  OF  THE   HIGHER  EDUCATION   OF 

WOMEN 103 

Mrs.  ALICE  FREEMAN  PALMER,  1889.          

THE  TEACHING  OF  HISTORY  IN   ACADEMIES 

AND  COLLEGES 131 

Prof.  LUCY  M.  SALMON,  Vassar  College,  1890. 

THE   PRIVATE  SCHOOL   FOR   GIRLS    ....     153 
Miss  AA-NA  C.  BRACKETT,  1892. 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  series  of  collections,  of  which  this  volume 
is  a  part,  is  made  up  of  representative  work  of 
the  women  of  the  State  of  New  York  in  period- 
ical literature. 

This  literature  has  been  classified  under  its 
conspicuous  divisions — Poetry,  Fiction,  History, 
Art,  Biography,  Translation,  Literary  Criticism, 
and  the  like. 

A  woman  of  eminent  success  in  each  depart- 
ment has  then  been  asked  to  make  a  collection 
of  representative  work  in  that  department;  to 
include  in  it  an  example  of  her  own  work,  and 
to  place  her  name  upon  the  volume  as  its 
Editor. 

These  selections  have  been  made,  as  far  as 
possible,  chronologically,  beginning  with  the 
earliest  work  of  the  century,  in  order  that 
the  volumes  may  carry  out  the  plan  of  the 


"Exhibit  of  Women's  Work  in  Literature  in 
the  State  of  New  York,"  of  which  they  are 
an  original  part. 

The  aim  of  this  Exhibit  was  to  make  a  rec- 
ord of  literary  work,  limited,  through  necessity, 
both  by  sex  and  locality,  but,  as  far  as  possi- 
ble, accurate  and  complete,  and  to  preserve  this 
record  in  the  State  Library  in  the  Capitol  at 
Albany. 

It  includes  twenty-five  hundred  books,  begin- 
ning with  the  works  of  Charlotte  Ramsay  Lennox, 
the  first-born  female  author  of  the  province  of 
New  York,  published  in  London  in  1759,  closing 
with  the  pages  of  a  translation  of  Herder,  still 
wet  from  the  press,  and  comprising  the  works  of 
almost  every  author  in  the  intervening  one  hun- 
dred and  forty  years. 

It  includes  also  three  hundred  papers  read  be- 
fore the  literary  clubs  of  the  State,  a  summary 
of  the  work  of  all  writers  for  the  press,  and  the 
folios  which  preserve  the  work  of  many  able 
women  who  have  not  published  books. 

The  women  of  the  State  of  New  York  have 
had  the  honor  of  decorating  and  furnishing  the 
Library  of  the  Women's  Building.  Believing 


the  best  equipment  of  a  library  to  be  literature, 
they  have  therefore  prepared  this  Exhibit ;  and 
have  made  its  character  comprehensive  and  his- 
toric, in  order  that  it  may  not  be  temporary,  but 
that  it  may  be  preserved  in  the  State  Library, 
and  may  have  permanent  value  for  future  lovers 
and  students  of  Americana. 

BLANCHE  WILDER  BELLAMY, 

Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Literature 
of  the  Board  of  Women  Managers  of  the 
State  of  New  York. 


PREFACE. 


THESE  essays,  arranged  in  the  order  of  the  dates 
at  which  they  were  written,  dating  from  1819  to 
1892,  have  no  relation  to  each  other  but  a  logical 
one,  and  their  logic  is  the  logic  of  events.  Pro- 
fessor Maria  Mitchell's  article  was  published  in 
Education,  Mrs.  Runkle's  in  The  Century  Maga- 
zine, Mrs.  Palmer's  in  The  Forum,  Professor 
Salmon's  in  The  Academy,  and  the  paper  on 
The  Private  School  in  HARPER'S  MAGAZINE.  That 
so  many  periodicals  offered  material  so  valuable 
shows  how  wide -spread  is  the  interest  in  the 
training  of  our  girls,  and  how  general  and  how 
intelligent  is  now  the  demand  for  the  best.  The 
change  which  has  come  about  in  these  seven- 
ty years  needs  no  emphasis  for  those  who  read 
in  these  pages  the  pleading  words  of  Mrs.  Wil- 
lard  to  the  members  of  the  New  York  Legislature 
in  behalf  simply  of  a  girls'  seminary,  and  then 
look  through  the  collection  to  find  that  two  of 
the  articles  have  been  written  by  women  profes- 
sors in  girls'  colleges,  and  one  of  them  by  a 
woman  who  was  for  many  years  president  of 


a  girls'  college.  She  tells  us  that  at  present  the 
women's  colleges  of  this  country  reckon  more 
than  50,000  students. 

The  facts  speak  for  themselves.  It  is  signifi- 
cant that  we  could  find  no  words  to  present  here 
written  during  the  period  of  the  Civil  War. 
Then  women  found  their  opportunity  practically 
to  demonstrate  to  the  world  that  opportunity  was 
all  they  needed. 

But  in  all  that  has  been  written  since  there  is 
nothing  more  subtile  than  the  argument  presented 
by  Mrs.  Willard  in  1819  in  behalf  of  an  education 
"  giving  strength  and  expansion  tc»  the  minds  of 
women,"  whom  she  asserts  to  be  "an  essential  part 
of  the  body  politic,"  with  her  warning  to  the  law- 
makers of  America  to  avoid  the  example  of  other 
republics,  where  "  women  have  repaid  the  nations 
with  ruin  for  their  folly  "  in  neglecting  them. 

A  difference  of  tone  in  the  essays  is  also  ex- 
ceedingly suggestive:  In  1819  Mrs.  Willard  ap- 
peals to  the  "  enlightened  politicians  "  of  her 
time;  in  1881  Maria  Mitchell  writes,  "All  that 
women  ask  for  is  the  enlightenment  of  our  pres- 
ent rulers." 

ANNA  C.  BRACKETT. 

NEW  YORK,  1893. 


WOMAN 

AND  THE  HIGHER  EDUCATION. 


A    PLAN    FOK    IMPROVING    FEMALE 
EDUCATION.* 

BY   MRS.  EMMA  WILLARD. 

THE  object  of  this  address  is  to  convince 
the  public  that  a  reform  with  respect  to 
female  education  is  necessary  ;  that  it  can- 
not be  effected  by  individual  exertion,  but 
that  it  requires  the  aid  of  the  Legislature ; 
and,  further,  by  showing  the  justice,  the 
policy,  and  the  magnanimity  of  such  an  un- 
dertaking, to  persuade  that  body  to  endow 
a  seminary  for  females  as  the  commence- 
ment of  sucli  reformation. 

The  idea  of  a  college  for  males  will  nat- 
urally be  associated  with  that  of  a  seminary, 
instituted  and  endowed  by  the  public ;  and 
the  absurdity  of  sending  ladies  to  college 
may,  at  first  thouglt,  strike  every  one  to 
whom  this  subject  shall  be  proposed.  I 
therefore  hasten  to  observe  that  the  semi- 
nary here  recommended  will  be  as  different 

*  An  address  to  the  public,  particularly  to  the  members 
of  the  Legislature  of  New  York. 
1  1 


from  those  appropriated  to  the  other  sex 
as  the  female  character  and  duties  are  from 
the  male.  The  business  of  the  husbaudmau 
is  not  to  waste  his  endeavors  in  seeking  to 
make  his  orchard  attain  the  strength  and 
majesty  of  his  forest,  but  to  rear  each  to 
the  perfection  of  its  nature. 

That  the  improvement  of  female  educa- 
tion will  be  considered  by  our  enlightened 
citizens  as  a  subject  of  importance,  the  lib- 
erality with  which  they  part  with  their 
property  to  educate  their  daughters  is  a 
sufficient  evidence;  and  why  should  they 
not,  when  assembled  in  the  Legislature,  act 
in  concert  to  effect  a  noble  object  which, 
though  dear  to  them  individually,  cannot 
be  accomplished  by  their  unconnected  exer- 
tions ? 

If  the  improvement  of  the  American  fe- 
male character,  and  that  alone,  could  be 
effected  by  public  liberality,  employed  in 
giving  better  means  of  instruction,  such  im- 
provement of  one-half  of  society,  and  that 
half  which  barbarous  and  despotic  nations 
have  ever  degraded,  would  of  itself  be  an 
object  worthy  of  the  most  liberal  govern- 
ment on  earth  ;  but  if  the  female  character 
be  raised,  it  must  inevitably  raise  that  of 
the  other  sex ;  and  thus  does  the  plan  pro- 


posed  offer,  as  the  object  of  legislative 
bounty,  to  elevate  the  whole  character  of  the 
community. 

As  evidence  that  this  statement  does  not 
exaggerate  the  female  influence  in  society, 
our  sex  need  but  to  be  considered  in  the 
single  relation  of  mothers.  In  this  charac- 
ter we  have  the  charge  of  the  whole  mass 
of  individuals  who  are  to  compose  the  suc- 
ceeding generation  during  that  period  of 
youth  when  the  pliant  mind  takes  any  di- 
rection to  which  it  is  steadily  guided  by  a 
forming  hand.  How  important  a  power  is 
given  by  this  charge  !  Yet  little  do  too  many 
of  my  sex  know  how  either  to  appreciate  or 
improve  it.  Unprovided  with  the  means  of 
acquiring  that  knowledge  which  flows  lib- 
erally to  the  other  sex,  having  our  time  of 
education  devoted  to  frivolous  acquirements, 
how  should  we  understand  the  nature  of 
the  mind  so  as  to  be  aware  of  the  impor- 
tance of  those  early  impressions  which  we 
make  upon  the  minds  of  our  children  ?  Or 
how  should  we  be  able  to  form  enlarged 
and  correct  views,  either  of  the  character 
to  which  we  ought  to  mould  them  or 
of  the  means  most  proper  to  form  them 
aright  ? 

Considered  in  this  point  of  view,  were  the 


interests  of  male  education  alone  to  be  con- 
sulted, that  of  females  becomes  of  sufficient 
importance  to  engage  the  public  attention. 
Would  we  rear  the  human  plant  to  its  perfec- 
tion, we  must  first  fertilize  the  soil  which 
produces  it.  If  it  acquire  its  first  bent  and 
texture  upon  a  barren  plain,  it  will  avail 
comparatively  little  should  it  be  afterwards 
transplanted  to  a  garden. 

In  the  arrangement  of  my  remarks  I  shall 
pursue  the  following  order: 

I.  Treat  of  the  defects  of  the  present  mode 
of  female  education,  and  their  causes. 

II.  Consider  the  principles  by  which  edu- 
cation should  be  regulated. 

III.  Sketch  a  plan  of  a  female  seminary. 

IV.  Show  the  benefits  which  society  would 
receive  from  such  seminaries. 


DEFECTS  IN  THE  PRESENT  MODE    OF  FEMALE 
EDUCATION,  AND   THEIR  CAUSES. 

Civilized  nations  have  long  since  been 
convinced  that  education  as  it  respects 
males  will  not,  like  trade,  regulate  itself; 
and  hence  they  have  made  it  a  prime  object 
to  provide  that  sex  with  everything  requi- 
site to  facilitate  their  progress  in  learning; 


but  female  education  has  been  left  to  the 
mercy  of  private  adventurers  ;  and  the  con- 
sequence has  been  to  our  sex  the  same  as  it 
would  have  been  to  the  other  had  legisla- 
tures left  their  accommodations  and  means 
of  instruction  to  chance  also. 

Education  cannot  prosper  in  any  commu- 
nity unless,  from  the  ordinary  motives  which 
actuate  the  human  mind,  the  best  and  most 
cultivated  talents  of  that  community  can 
be  brought  into  exercise  in  that  way.  Male 
education  flourishes  because,  from  the  guar- 
dian care  of  legislatures,  the  presidencies 
and  professorships  of  our  colleges  are  some 
of  the  highest  objects  to  which  the  eye  of 
ambition  is  directed.  Not  so  with  female 
institutions.  Preceptresses  of  these  are  de- 
pendent on  their  pupils  for  support,  and  are 
consequently  liable  to  become  the  victims 
of  their  caprice.  In  such  a  situation  it  is 
not  more  desirable  to  be  a  preceptress  than  it 
would  be  to  be  a  parent  invested  with  the 
care  of  children  and  responsible  for  their 
behavior,  and  yet  depending  on  them  for 
subsistence,  and  destitute  of  power  to  en- 
force their  obedience. 

Feminine  delicacy  requires  that  girls 
should  be  educated  chiefly  by  their  own  sex. 
This  is  apparent  from  considerations  that 


;  ^regard  tlieir  health  and  conveniences,  the 
propriety  of  their  dress  and  manners,  and 
their  domestic  accomplishments. 

Boarding-schools,  therefore,  whatever  may 
be  their  defects,  furnish  the  best  mode  of 
education  provided  for  females. 

Concerning  these  schools  it  may  be  ob- 
served : 

1.  They  are  temporary  institutions,  formed 
by  individuals  whose  object  is  present  emol- 
ument.    But  they  cannot  be  expected  to  be 
greatly  lucrative ;  therefore,  the  individuals 
who  establish  them  cannot  afford  to  provide 
suitable    acornmodatious  as  to   room.      At 
night  the  pupils  are  frequently  crowded  in 
their  lodging  -  rooms,  and    during  the  day 
they  are  generally  placed  together  in  one 
apartment,  where  there  is  a  heterogeneous 
mixture  of  different  kinds  of  business,  ac- 
companied with  so  much  noise  and  confu- 
sion as  greatly  to  impede  their  progress  in 
study. 

2.  As  individuals  cannot  afford  to  provide 
suitable  accommodations  as  to  room,  so  nei- 
ther can  they  afford  libraries  and  other  ap- 
paratus   necessary   to    teach    properly   the 
various  branches  in  which  they  pretend  to 
instruct. 

3.  Neither  can  the  individuals  who  estab- 


lisli  these  schools  afford  to  provide  suitable 
instruction.  It  not  uufrequently  happens 
that  one  instructress  teaches,  at  the  same 
time  and  in  the  same  room,  ten  or  twelve  dis- 
tinct branches.  If  assistants  are  provided, 
such  are  usually  taken  as  can  be  procured 
for  a  small  compensation.  True,  in  our  large 
cities  preceptresses  provide  their  pupils 
with  masters,  though  at  an  expense  Avhich 
few  can  afford ;  yet  none  of  these  masters 
are  responsible  for  the  general  proficiency 
or  demeanor  of  the  pupils.  Their  only  re- 
sponsibility is  in  the  particular  branch 
which  they  teach,  and  to  a  preceptress  who 
probably  does  not  understand  it  herself, 
and  who  is  therefore  incapable  of  judging 
whether  or  not  it  is  well  taught. 

4.  It  is  impossible  that  in  these  schools 
such  systems  should  be  adopted  and  en- 
forced as  are  requisite  for  properly  class- 
ing the  pupils.  Institutions  for  young  gen- 
tlemen are  founded  by  public  authority,  and 
are  permanent;  they  are  endowed  with 
funds,  and  their  instructors  and  overseers 
are  invested  with  authority  to  make  such 
laws  as  they  shall  deem  most  salutary. 
From  their  permanency  their  laws  and  rules 
are  well  known.  With  their  funds  they  pro- 
cure libraries,  philosophical  apparatus,  and 


other  advantages  superior  to  what  can  else- 
where be  found ;  and  to  enjoy  these,  indi- 
viduals are  placed  under  their  discipline 
who  would  not  else  be  subjected  to  it. 
Hence  the  directors  of  these  institutions  can 
enforce  among  other  regulations  those  which 
enable  them  to  make  a  perfect  classification 
of  their  students.  They  regulate  their  qual- 
ifications for  entrance,  the  kind  and  order 
of  their  studies,  and  the  period  of  their  re- 
maining at  the  seminary.  Female  schools 
present  the  reverse  of  this.  Wanting  per- 
manency and  dependent  on  individual  pa- 
tronage, had  they  the  wisdom  to  make  salu- 
tary regulations,  they  could  neither  enforce 
nor  purchase  compliance.  The  pupils  are 
irregular  in  their  times  of  entering  and 
leaving  school,  and  they  are  of  various  and 
dissimilar  acquirements.  Each  scholar  of 
mature  age  thinks  she  has  a  right  to  judge 
for  herself  respecting  what  she  is  to  be 
taught ;  and  the  parents  of  those  who  are 
not,  consider  that  they  have  the  same  right 
to  judge  for  them.  Under  such  disadvan- 
tages a  school  cannot  be  classed,  except  in  a 
very  imperfect  manner. 

5.  It  is  for  the  interest  of  instructresses 
of  boarding-schools  to  teach  their  pupils 
showy  accomplishments  rather  than  those 


which  are  solid  and  useful.  Their  object  iu 
teaching  is  generally  present  profit.  In  or- 
der to  realize  this,  they  must  contrive  to 
give  immediate  celebrity  to  their  schools. 
If  they  attend  chiefly  to  the  cultivation  of 
the  mind,  their  work  may  not  be  manifest 
at  the  first  glance ;  but  let  the  pupil  return 
home  laden  with  fashionable  toys,  and  her 
young  companions,  filled  with  envy  and  as- 
tonishment, are  never  satisfied  till  they  are 
permitted  to  share  the  precious  instruction. 
It  is  true,  with  the  turn  of  the  fashion 
the  toys  which  they  are  taught  to  make 
will  become  obsolete,  and  no  benefit  remain 
to  them  of  perhaps  the  only  money  that 
will  ever  be  expended  on  their  education ; 
but  the  object  of  the  instructress  may  be 
accomplished,  notwithstanding,  if  that  is 
directed  to  her  own  rather  than  her  pupil's 
advantage. 

6.  As  these  schools  are  private  establish- 
ments, their  preceptresses  are  not  accounta- 
ble to  any  particular  persons.  Any  woman 
has  a  right  to  open  a  school  in  any  place, 
and  no  one,  either  from  law  or  custom,  can 
prevent  her.  Hence  the  public  are  liable  to 
be  imposed  upon,  both  with  respect  to  the 
character  and  acquirements  of  preceptress- 
es ;  I  am  far,  however,  from  asserting  that 


this  is  always  the  case.  It  has  been  before 
observed  that  in  the  present  state  of  things 
the  ordinary  motives  which  actuate  the  hu- 
man mind  would  not  induce  ladies  of  the 
best  and  most  cultivated  talents  to  engage 
in  the  business  of  instructing  from  choice. 
But  some  have  done  it  from  necessity,  and 
occasionally  an  extraordinary  female  has  oc- 
cupied herself  in  instructing  because  she 
felt  that  impulse  to  be  active  and  useful 
which  is  the  characteristic  of  a  vigorous 
and  noble  mind,  and  because  she  found  few 
avenues  to  extensive  usefulness  open  to  her 
sex.  But  if  such  has  been  the  fact,  it  has 
not  been  the  consequence  of  any  system 
from  which  a  similar  result  can  be  expected 
to  recur  with  regularity,  and  it  remains 
true  that  the  public  are  liable  to  imposition 
both  with  regard  to  the  character  and  ac- 
quirements of  preceptresses. 

Instances  have  lately  occurred  in  which 
women  of  bad  reputation,  at  a  distance  from 
scenes  of  their  former  life,  have  been  in- 
trusted by  our  unsuspecting  citizens  with 
the  instruction  of  their  daughters. 

But  the  moral  reputation  of  individuals 
is  more  a  matter  of  public  notoriety  than 
their  literary  attainments ;  hence  society  is 
more  liable  to  be  deceived  with  regard  to 


the  acquirements  of  instructresses  than  with 
respect  to  their  characters. 

Those  women,  however,  who  deceive  so- 
ciety as  to  the  advantages  which  they  give 
their  pupils  are  not  charged  with  any  ill 
intention.  They  teach  as  they  were  taught, 
and  believe  that  the  public  are  benefited  by 
their  labors.  Acquiring  in  their  youth  a 
high  value  for  their  own  superficial  accom- 
plishments, they  regard  all  others  as  super- 
numerary if  not  unbecoming.  Although 
these  considerations  exculpate  individuals, 
yet  they  do  not  diminish  the  injury  which 
society  receives ;  for  they  show  that  the 
worst  which  is  to  be  expected  from  such  in- 
struction is  not  that  the  pupils  will  remain 
ignorant,  but  that  by  adopting  the  views 
of  their  teachers  they  will  have  their  minds 
barred  against  future  improvement  by  ac- 
quiring a  disrelish,  if  not  a  contempt,  for 
useful  knowledge. 

7.  Although,  from  a  want  "of  public  sup- 
port, preceptresses  of  boarding-schools  have 
not  the  means  of  enforcing  such  a  system  as 
would  lead  to  a  perfect  classification  of  their 
pupils,  and  although  they  are  confined  in 
other  respects  within  narrow  limits,  yet  be- 
cause these  establishments  are  not  dependent 
on  any  public  body  within  those  limits,  they 


have  a  power  far  more  arbitrary  and  uncon- 
trolled than  is  allowed  the  learned  and  judi- 
cious instructors  of  our  male  seminaries. 

They  can  at  their  option  omit  their  own 
duties,  and  excuse  their  pupils  from  theirs. 

They  can  make  absurd  and  ridiculous 
regulations. 

They  can  make  improper  and  even  wicked 
exactions  of  their  pupils. 

Thus  the  writer  has  endeavored  to  point 
out  the  defects  of  the  present  mode  of  fe- 
male education,  chiefly  in  order  to  show 
that  the  great  cause  of  these  defects  consists 
in  a  state  of  things  in  which  legislatures, 
undervaluing  the  importance  of  women  in 
society,  neglect  to  provide  for  their  educa- 
tion, and  suffer  it  to  become  the  sport  of  ad- 
venturers of  fortune  who  may  be  both  ig- 
norant and  vicious. 


OP    THE    PRINCIPLES   BY  WHICH    EDUCATION 
SHOULD   BE   REGULATED. 

To  contemplate  the  principles  which 
should  regulate  systems  of  instruction,  and 
consider  how  little  those  principles  have 
been  regarded  in  educating  our  sex,  will 
show  the  defects  of  female  education  in  a 


13 


still  stronger  point  of  light,  and  will  also 
afford  a  standard  by  which  any  plan  for  its 
improvement  may  be  measured. 

Education  should  seek  to  bring  its  sub- 
jects to  the  perfection  of  their  moral,  intel- 
lectual, and  physical  nature,  in  order  that 
they  may  be  of  the  greatest  possible  use  to 
themselves  and  others  ;  or,  to  use  a  different 
"expression,  that  they  may  be  the  means  of 
the  greatest  possible  happiness  of  which 
they  are  capable,  both  as  to  what  they  enjoy 
and  what  they  communicate. 

Those  youth  have  the  surest  chance  of  en- 
joying and  communicating  happiness  who 
are  best  qualified,  both  by  internal  disposi- 
tion and  external  habits,  to  perform  with 
readiness  those  duties  which  their  future 
life  will  most  probably  give  them  occasion 
to  practise. 

Studies  and  employments  should  there- 
fore be  selected  from  one  or  both  of  the  fol- 
lowing considerations :  either  because  they 
are  peculiarly  fitted  to  improve  the  facul- 
ties, or  because  they  are  such  as  the  pupil 
will  most  probably  have  occasion  to  practise 
in  future  life. 

These  are  the  principles  on  which  systems 
of  male  education  are  founded ;  but  female 
education  has  not  yet  been  systematized. 


Chance  and  confusion  reign  here.  Not  even 
is  youth  considered  in  our  sex,  as  in  the 
other,  a  season  which  should  be  wholly  de- 
voted to  improvement.  Among  families  so 
rich  as  to  be  entirely  above  labor,  the  daugh- 
ters are  hurried  through  the  routine  of 
boarding-school  instruction,  and  at  an  early 
period  introduced  into  the  gay  world;  and 
thenceforth  their  only  object  is  amusement. 
Mark  the  different  treatment  which  the  sous 
of  these  families  receive.  While  their  sisters 
are  gliding  through  the  mazes  of  the  mid- 
night dance,  they  employ  the  lamp  to  treas- 
ure up  for  future  use  the  riches  of  ancient 
wisdom,  or  to  gather  strength  and  expan- 
sion of  mind  in  exploring  the  wonderful 
paths  of  philosophy.  When  the  youth  of 
the  two  sexes  has  been  spent  so  differently, 
is  it  strange,  or  is  nature  in  fault,  if  more 
mature  age  has  brought  such  a  difference  of 
character  that  our  sex  have  been  considered 
by  the  other  as  the  pampered,  wayward  ba- 
bies of  society,  who  must  have  some  rattle 
put  into  our  hands  to  keep  us  from  doing 
mischief  to  ourselves  or  others  ? 

Another  difference  in  the  treatment  of 
sexes  is  made  in  our  country  which,  though 
not  equally  pernicious  to  society,  is  more 
pathetically  unjust  to  our  sex.  How  often 


have  we  seen  a  student  who,  returning  from 
his  literary  pursuits,  finds  a  sister,  who  was 
his  equal  iu  acquirements  while  their  ad- 
vantages were  equal,  of  whom  he  is  now 
ashamed.  While  his  youth  was  devoted  to 
study  and  he  was  furnished  with  the  means, 
she,  without  any  object  of  improvement, 
drudged  at  home  to  assist  in  the  support 
of  the  father's  family,  and  perhaps  to  con- 
tribute to  her  brother's  subsistence  abroad; 
and  now,  a  being  of  a  lower  order,  the  rustic 
innocent  wonders  and  weeps  at  his  neglect. 

Not  only  has  there  been  a  want  of  system 
concerning  female  education,  but  much  of 
what  has  been  done  has  proceeded  upon 
mistaken  principles. 

One  of  these  is  that,  without  a  regard  to 
the  different  periods  of  life  proportionate  to 
their  importance,  the  education  of  females 
has  been  too  exclusively  directed  to  fit  them 
for  displaying  to  advantage  the  charms  of 
youth  and  beauty.  Though  it  may  be 
proper  to  adorn  this  period  of  life,  yet  it  is 
incomparably  more  important  to  prepare  for 
the  serious  duties  of  maturer  years.  Though 
well  to  decorate  the  blossom,  it  is  far  better 
to  prepare  for  the  harvest.  In  the  vege- 
table creation  Nature  seems  but  to  sport 
when  she  embellishes  the  flower,  while  all 


her  serious  cares  are  directed  to  perfect  the 
fruit. 

Another  error  is  that  it  has  heen  made 
the  first  object  in  educating  our  sex  to  pre- 
pare them  to  please  the  other.  But  reason 
and  religion  teach  that  we  too  are  primary 
existences ;  that  it  is  for  us  to  move  in  the 
orbit  of  our  duty  around  the  Holy  Centre 
of  perfection,  the  companions,  not  the  satel- 
lites, of  men ;  else,  instead  of  shedding 
around  us  an  influence  that  may  help  to 
keep  them  in  their  proper  course,  we  must 
accompany  them  in  their  wildest  deviations. 

I  would  not  be  understood  to  insinuate 
that  we  are  not  in  particular  situations  to 
yield  obedience  to  the  other  sex.  Submis- 
sion and  obedience  belong  to  every  being  in 
the  universe,  except  the  great  Master  of  the 
whole.  Nor  is  it  a  degrading  peculiarity 
to  our  sex  to  be  under  human  authority. 
Whenever  one  class  of  human  beings  derive 
from  another  the  benefit  of  support  and 
protection,  they  must  pay  its  equivalent — 
obedience.  Thus,  while  we  receive  these 
benefits  from  our  parents,  we  are  all,  with- 
out distinction  of  sex,  under  their  authority , 
when  we  receive  them  from  the  government 
of  our  country,  we  must  obey  our  rulers ; 
and  when  our  sex  take  the  obligations  of 


17 


marriage,  and  receive  protection  and  sup- 
port from  the  other,  it  is  reasonable  that  we 
too  should  yield  obedience.  Yet  is  neither 
the  child,  nor  the  subject,  nor  the  wife  under 
human  authority, but  in  subservience  to  the 
divine.  Our  highest  responsibility  is  to 
God,  and  our  highest  interest  is  to  please 
Him ;  therefore,  to  secure  this  interest  should 
our  education  be  directed. 

Neither  would  I  be  understood  to  mean 
that  our  sex  should  not  seek  to  make  them- 
selves agreeable  to  the  other.  The  error 
complained  of  is  that  the  taste  of  men,  what- 
ever it  might  happen  to  be,  has  been  made  a 
standard  for  the  formation  of  the  female 
character.  In  whatever  we  do,  it  is  of  the 
utmost  importance  that  the  rule  by  which 
we  work  be  perfect.  For  if  otherwise,  what 
is  it  but  to  err  upon  principle  ?  A  system 
of  education  which  leads  one  class  of  human 
beings  to  consider  the  approbation  of  an- 
other as  their  highest  object,  teaches  that 
the  rule  of  their  conduct  should  be  the  will 
of  beings,  imperfect  and  erring  like  them- 
selves, rather  than  the  will  of  God,  which  is 
the  only  standard  of  perfection. 

Having  now  considered  female  education 
both  in  theory  and  practice,  and  seen  that 
in  its  present  state  it  is,  in  fact,  a  thing 
2 


18 


"  without  form,  aud  void/'  the  mind  is  nat- 
urally led  to  inquire  after  a  remedy  for  the 
evils  it  has  been  contemplating.  Can  indi- 
viduals furnish  this  remedy  ?  It  has  here- 
tofore been  left  to  them,  aud  we  have  seen 
the  consequence.  If  education  is  a  business 
which  might  naturally  prosper  if  left  to  in- 
dividual exertion,  why  have  legislatures  in- 
termeddled with  it  at  all  ?  If  it  is  not,  why 
do  they  make  their  daughters  illegitimates, 
and  bestow  all  their  care  upon  their  sons  ? 

It  is  the  duty  of  a  government  to  do  all  in 
its  power  to  promote  the  present  and  future 
prosperity  of  the  nation  over  which  it  is 
placed.  This  prosperity  will  depend  on  the 
character  of  its  citizens.  The  characters  of 
*  these  will  be  formed  by  their  mothers ;  and 
it  is  through  the  mothers  that  the  govern- 
ment can  control  the  characters  of  its  future 
citizens,  to  form  them  such  as  will  insure 
their  country's  prosperity.  If  this  is  the 
case,  then  it  is  the  duty  of  our  present  leg- 
islatures to  begin  now  to  form  the  charac- 
ters of  the  next  generation  by  controlling 
that  of  the  females  who  are  to  be  the  moth- 
ers, while  it  is  yet  with  them  a  season  of  im- 
provement. 

Bat  should  the  conclusion  be  almost  ad- 
mitted that  our  sex  too  are  the  legitimate 


19 


children  of  the  Legislature,  and  that  it  is 
their  duty  to  afford  us  a  share  of  their  pater- 
nal bounty,  the  phantom  of  a  college-learned 
lady  would  be  re.ady  to  rise  up  and  destroy 
every  good  resolution  which  the  admission 
of  this  truth  would  naturally  produce  in  our 
favor. 

To  show  that  it  is  not  a  masculine  educa- 
tion that  is  here  recommended,  and  to  afford 
a  definite  view  of  the  manner  in  which,  a 
female  institution  might  possess  the  re- 
spectability, permanency,  and  uniformity  of 
operation  of  those  appropriated  to  males, 
and  yet  differ  from  them  so  as  to  be  adapted 
to  that  difference  of  character  and  duties  to 
which  the  softer  sex  should  be  formed,  is 
the  object  of  the  following  imperfect 


SKETCH  OF  A  FEMALE  SEMINARY. 

From  considering  the  deficiencies  in  board- 
ing-schools, much  may  be  learned  with  re- 
gard to  what  would  be  needed  for  the  pros- 
perity and  usefulness  of  a  public  seminary 
for  females. 

I.  There  would  be  needed  a  building,  with 
commodious  rooms  for  lodging  and  recita- 
tion ;  apartments  for  the  reception  of  appa- 


20 


ratus,  and  for  the  acconimodatiou  of  the  do- 
mestic department. 

II.  A  library,  containing  books   on  the 
various  subjects  in  which  the  pupils  were  to 
receive  instruction ;    musical   instruments ; 
some  good  paintings,  to  form  the  taste  and 
serve  as  models  for  the  execution  of  those 
who  were  to  be  instructed  in  that  art ;  maps, 
globes,  and  a  small  collection  of  philosophi- 
cal apparatus. 

III.  A  judicious  board  of  trust,  competent 
and  desirous  to  promote  its  interests,  would, 
in  a  female  as  in  a  male  literary  institution, 
be  the  corner-stone  of  its  prosperity.     On 
this  board  it  would  depend  to  provide : 

IV.  Suitable  instruction.   This  article  may 
be  subdivided  under  four  heads  : 

1.  Religious  and  Moral. 

2.  Literary. 

3.  Domestic. 

4.  Ornamental. 

1.  Religious  and  Moral. — A  regular  atten- 
tion to  religious  duties  would  of  course  be 
required  of  the  pupils  by  the  laws  of  the  in- 
stitution. The  trustees  would  be  careful 
to  appoint  no  instructors  who  would  not 
teach  religion  and  morality,  both  by  their 
example  and  by  leading  the  minds  of  the 
pupils  to  perceive  that  these  constitute  the 


true  end  of  all  education.  It  would  be  de- 
sirable that  the  young  ladies  should  spend 
part  of  their  Sabbaths  in  hearing  discourses 
relative  to  the  peculiar  duties  of  their  sex. 
The  evidences  of  Christianity  and  moral 
philosophy  would  constitute  a  part  of  their 
studies. 

2.  Literary  Instruction. — To  make  an  ex- 
act enumeration  of  the  branches  of  litera- 
ture which  might  be  taught  would  be  im- 
possible unless  the  time  of  the  pupils'  con- 
tinuance at  the  seminary  and  the  requisites 
for  entrance  were  previously  fixed.  Such 
an  enumeration  would  be  tedious,  nor  do  I 
conceive  that  it  would  be  at  all  pro  motive 
of  my  object.  The  difficulty  complained  of 
is,  not  that  we  are  at  a  loss  what  sciences  we 
ought  to  learn,  but  that  we  have  not  proper 
advantages  to  learn  any.  Many  writers 
have  given  us  excellent  advice  in  regard  to 
what  we  should  be  taught,  but  no  legisla- 
ture has  provided  us  the  means  of  instruc- 
tion. Not,  however,  to  pass  lightly  over 
this  fundamental  part  of  education,  I  will 
mention  one  or  two  of  the  less  obvious 
branches  of  science  which,  I  conceive,  should 
engage  the  youthful  attention  of  rny  sex. 

It  is  highly  important  that  females  should 
be  conversant  with  those  studies  which  will 


22 


load  them  to  understand  the  operations  of 
the  human  mind.  The  chief  use  to  which 
the  philosophy  of  the  mind  can  be  applied 
is  to  regulate  education  by  its  rules.  The 
ductile  mind  of  the  child  is  intrusted  to 
the  mother;  and  she  ought  to  have  every 
possible  assistance  in  acquiring  a  knowl- 
edge of  this  noble  material  on  which  it  is 
her  business  to  operate  that  she  may  best 
understand  how  to  mould  it  to  its  most  ex- 
cellent form. 

Natural  philosophy  has  not  often  been 
taught  to  our  sex.  Yet  why  should  we  be 
kept  in  ignorance  of  the  great  machinery  of 
Nature,  and  left  to  the  vulgar  notion  that 
nothing  is  curious  but  what  deviates  from 
her  common  course  ?  If  mothers  were  ac- 
quainted with  this  science,  they  would  com- 
municate very  many  of  its  principles  to  their 
children  in  early  youth.  From  the  bursting 
of  an  egg  buried  in  the  fire  I  have  heard  an 
intelligent  mother  lead  her  prattling  in- 
quirer to  understand  the  cause  of  the  earth- 
quake. Bat  how  often  does  the  mother, 
from  ignorance  on  this  subject,  give  her  child 
the  most  erroneous  and  contracted  views  of 
the  causes  of  natural  phenomena — views 
which,  though  he  may  afterwards  learn  to 
be  false,  are  yet  from  the  laws  of  association, 


23 


ever  ready  to  return  unless  the  active  pow- 
ers of  the  mind  are  continually  upon  the 
alert  to  keep  them  out.  A  knowledge  of 
natural  philosophy  is  calculated  to  heighten 
the  moral  taste,  by  bringing  to  view  the 
majesty  and  beauty  of  order  and  design, 
and  to  enliven  piety,  by  enabling  the  mind 
more  clearly  to  perceive,  throughout  the 
manifold  works  of  God,  that  wisdom  in  which 
He  hath  made  them  all. 

In  some  of  the  sciences  proper  for  our  sex 
the  books  written  for  the  other  would  need 
alteration,  because  in  some  they  presup- 
pose more  knowledge  than  female  pupils 
would  possess;  in  others  they  have  parts 
not  particularly  interesting  to  our  sex,  and 
omit  subjects  immediately  relating  to  their 
pursuits.  There  would  likewise  be  needed 
for  a  female  seminary  some  works  which  I 
believe  are  nowhere  extant,  such  as  a  sys- 
tematic treatise  on  housewifery. 

3.  Domestic  instruction  should  be  con- 
sidered important  in  a  female  seminary.  It 
is  the  duty  of  our  sex  to  regulate  the  inter- 
nal concerns  of  every  family,  and  unless 
they  be  properly  qualified  to  discharge  this 
duty,  whatever  may  be  their  literary  or  or- 
namental attainments,  they  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  make  either  good  wives,  good 


mothers,  or  good  mistresses  of  families;  and 
if  they  are  none  of  these,  they  must  be  bad 
members  of  society;  for  it  is  by  promoting 
or  destroying  the  comfort  and  prosperity  of 
their  own  families  that  females  serve  or  in- 
jure the  community.  To  superintend  the 
domestic  department  there  should  be  a  re- 
spectable lady,  experienced  in  the  best  meth- 
ods of  housewifery,  and  acquainted  with 
propriety  of  dress  and  manners.  Under  her 
tuition  the  pupils  ought  to  be  placed  for  a 
certain  length  of  time  every  morning.  A 
spirit  of  neatness  and  order  should  here  be 
treated  as  a  virtue,  and  the  contrary,  if  ex- 
cessive and  incorrigible,  be  punished  with 
expulsion.  There  might  be  a  gradation  of 
employment  in  the  domestic  department,  ac- 
cording to  the  length  of  time  the  pupils  had 
remained  at  the  institution.  The  older  schol- 
ars might  then  assist  the  superintendent  in 
instructing  the  younger,  and  the  whole  be 
so  arranged  that  each  pupil  might  have  ad- 
vantages to  become  a  good  domestic  mana- 
ger by  the  time  she  has  completed  her 
studies. 

This  plan  would  afford  a  healthy  exercise. 
It  would  prevent  that  estrangement  from  do- 
mestic duties  which  would  be  likely  to  take 
place  in  a  length  of  time  devoted  to  study 


25 


with  those  to  whom  they  were  previously 
familiar,  and  would  accustom  those  to 
them  who  from  ignorance  might  otherwise 
put  at  hazard  their  own  happiness  and  the 
prosperity  of  their  families. 

These  objects  might  doubtless  be  effected 
by  a  scheme  of  domestic  instruction,  and 
probably  others  of  no  inconsiderable  impor- 
tance. It  is  believed  that  housewifery  might 
be  greatly  improved  by  being  taught  not 
only  in  practice  but  in  theory.  Why  may  it 
not  be  reduced  to  a  system,  as  well  as  other 
arts?  There  are  right  ways  of  performing 
its  various  operations,  and  there  are  reasons 
why  those  ways  are  right.  And  why  may 
not  rules  be  formed,  their  reasons  collected, 
and  the  whole  be  digested  into  a  system,  to 
guide  the  learner's  practice  ? 

It  is  obvious  that  theory  alone  can  never 
make  a  good  artist ;  and  it  is  equally  obvious 
that  practice,  unaided  by  theory,  can  never 
correct  errors,  but  must  establish  them.  If 
I  should  perform  anything  in  a  wrong  man- 
ner all  my  life,  and  teach  my  children  to 
perform  it  in  the  same  manner  still,  through 
my  life  and  theirs,  it  would  be  wrong. 
Without  alteration  there  can  be  no  improve- 
ment ;  but  how  are  we  to  alter  so  as  to  im- 
prove, if  we  are  ignorant  of  the  principles  of 


our  art,  with  which  we  should  compare  our 
practice  and  by  which  we  should  regulate  it? 
In  the  present  state  of  things  it  is  not  to 
be  expected  that  any  material  improvements 
in  housewifery  should  be  made.  There  he- 
ing  no  uniformity  of  method  prevailing 
among  different  housewives,  of  course  the 
communications  from  one  to  another  are  not 
much  more  likely  to  improve  the  art  than 
a  communication  between  two  mechanics 
of  different  trades  would  be  to  improve  each 
in  his  respective  occupation.  But  should  a 
system  of  principles  be  philosophically  ar- 
ranged and  taught7  both  in  theory  and  by 
practice,  to  a  large  number  of  females  whose 
minds  were  expanded  and  strengthened  by 
a  course  of  litera^7  instruction,  those  among 
them  of  an  investigating  turn  would,  when 
they  commencedhouse-keepingcousider  their 
domestic  operations  as  a  series  of  experi- 
ments which  either  proveft  or  refuted  the 
system  previously  taught.  They  would  then 
converse  together  like  those  who  practise  a 
common  art,  and  improve  each  other  by  their 
observations  and  experiments ;  and  they 
would  also  be  capable  of  improving  the  sys- 
tem by  detecting  its  errors,  and  by  making 
additions  of  new  principles  and  better  modes 
of  practice. 


4.  The  ornamental  branches  which  I  should 
recommend  for  a  female  seminary  are  draw- 
ing and  painting,  elegant  penmanship,  mu- 
sic, and  the  grace  of  motion.  Needle-work  is 
not  here  mentioned.  The  best  style  of  use- 
ful needle-work  should  either  be  taught  in 
the  domestic  department  or  made  a  qualifi- 
cation for  entrance ;  and  I  consider  that 
useful  which  may  contribute  to  the  decora- 
tion of  a  lady's  person,  or  the  convenience  or 
neatness  of  her  family.  But  the  use  of  the 
needle  for  other  purposes  than  these,  as  it 
affords  little  to  assist  in  the  formation  of  the 
character,  I  should  regard  as  a  waste  of  time. 

The  grace  of  motion  must  be  learned 
chiefly  from  instruction  in  dancing.  Other 
advantages  besides  that  of  a  graceful  car- 
riage might  be  derived  from  such  instruc- 
tion if  the  lessons  were  judiciously  timed. 
Exercise  is  needful  to  the  health,  and  recre- 
ation to  the  cheerfulness  and  contentment 
of  youth.  Female  youth  could  not  be  al- 
lowed to  range  unrestrained,  to  seek  amuse- 
ment for  themselves.  If  it  was  entirely  pro- 
hibited, they  would  be  driven  to  seek  it  by 
stealth,  which  would  lead  them  to  many 
improprieties  of  conduct,  and  would  have  a 
pernicious  effect  upon  their  general  charac- 
ter, by  inducing  a  habit  of  treading  forbidden 


28 


paths.  The  alternative  that  remains  is  to 
provide  them  with  proper  recreation,  which, 
after  the  confinement  of  the  day,  they  might 
enjoy  under  the  eye  of  their  instructors. 
Dancing  is  exactly  suited  to  this  purpose, 
as  also  to  that  of  exercise,  for  perhaps  in 
no  way  can  so  much  healthy  exercise  he 
taken  in  so  short  a  time.  It  has,  besides, 
this  advantage  over  other  amusements :  that 
it  affords  nothing  to  excite  the  bad  passions ; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  its  effects  are  to  soften 
the  mind,  to  banish  its  animosities,  and  to 
open  it  to  social  impressions. 

It  may  be  said  that  dancing  would  dissi- 
pate the  attention  and  estrange  it  from 
study.  Balls  would  doubtless  have  this 
effect ;  but  let  dancing  be  practised  every 
day  by  youth  of  the  same  sex,  without  change 
of  place,  dress,  or  company,  and  under  the 
eye  of  those  whom  they  are  accustomed  to 
obey,  and  it  would  excite  no  more  emotion 
than  any  other  exercise  or  amusement,  but 
in  degree,  as  it  is  of  itself  more  pleasant. 
But  it  must  ever  be  a  grateful  exercise  to 
youth,  as  it  is  one  to  which  Nature  herself 
prompts  them  at  the  sound  of  animating 
music. 

It  has  been  doubted  whether  painting  and 
music  should  be  taught  to  young  ladies,  be- 


cause  much  time  is  requisite  to  bring  them 
to  any  considerable  degree  of  perfection,  and 
they  are  not  immediately  useful.  Though 
these  objections  have  weight,  yet  they  are 
founded  on  too  limited  a  view  of  the  objects 
of  education.  They  leave  out  the  important 
consideration  of  forming  the  character.  I 
should  not  consider  it  an  essential  point 
that  the  music  of  a  lady's  piano  should  rival 
that  of  her  master's,  or  that  her  drawing- 
room  should  be  decorated  with  her  own 
paintings  rather  than  those  of  others ;  but 
it  is  the  intrinsic  advantage  which  she 
might  derive  from  the  refinement  of  herself 
that  would  induce  me  to  recommend  to  her 
an  attention  to  these  elegant  pursuits.  The 
harmony  of  sound  has  a  tendency  to  produce 
a  correspondent  harmony  of  soul ;  and  that 
art  which  obliges  us  to  study  Nature  in  order 
to  imitate  her  often  enkindles  the  latent 
spark  of  taste — of  sensibility  for  her  beau- 
ties, till  it  glows  to  adoration  for  their 
Author,  and  a  refined  love  of  all  His  works. 
V.  There  would  be  needed  for  a  female 
as  well  as  for  a  male  seminary  a  system  of 
laws  and  regulations,  so  arranged  that  both 
the  instructors  and  pupils  would  know  their 
duty;  and  thus  the  Avhole  business  move 
with  regularity  and  uniformity. 


The  laws  of  the  institution  would  be 
chiefly  directed  to  regulate  the  pupils'  qual- 
ifications for  entrance ;  the  kind  and  order 
of  their  studies;  their  behavior  while  at  the 
institution;  the  term  allotted  for  the  com- 
pletion of  their  studies ;  the  punishments  to 
be  inflicted  on  offenders;  and  the  rewards 
or  honors  to  be  bestowed  on  the  virtuous 
and  diligent. 

The  direct  rewards  or  honors  used  to  stim- 
ulate the  ambition  of  students  in  colleges  are, 
first,  the  certificate  or  diploma,  which  each 
receives  who  passes  successfully  through  the 
term  allotted  to  his  collegiate  studies ;  and, 
secondly,  the  appointments  to  perform  cer- 
tain parts  in  public  exhibitions,  which  are 
bestowed  by  the  faculty,  as  rewards  for 
superior  scholarship.  The  first  of  these 
modes  is  admissible  into  a  female  seminary  ; 
the  second  is  not,  as  public  speaking  forms 
no  part  of  female  education.  The  want  of 
this  mode  might,  however,  be  supplied  by 
examinations  judiciously  conducted.  The 
leisure  and  inclination  of  both  instructors 
and  scholars  would  combine  to  produce  a 
thorough  preparation  for  these  ;  for  neither 
would  have  any  other  public  test  of  the 
success  of  their  labors.  Persons  of  both 
sexes  would  attend.  The  less  entertaining 


parts  might  be  enlivened  by  interludes, 
where  the  pupils  in  painting  and  music 
would  display  their  several  improvements, 
Such  examinations  would  stimulate  the  in- 
structors to  give  their  scholars  more  atten- 
tion, by  which  the  leading  facts  and  prin- 
ciples of  their  studies  would  be  more  clearly 
understood  and  better  remembered.  The 
ambition  excited  among  the  pupils  would  op- 
erate without  placing  the  instructors  under 
the  necessity  of  making  distinctions  among 
them,  which  are  so  apt  to  be  considered  as 
invidious,  and  which  are  in  our  male  semi- 
naries such  fruitful  sources  of  disaffection. 

Perhaps  the  term  allotted  for  the  routine 
of  study  at  the  seminary  might  be  three 
years.  The  pupils  probably  would  not  be 
fitted  to  enter  till  about  the  age  of  fourteen. 
Whether  they  attended  to  sll  or  any  of  the 
ornamental  branches,  should  be  l^ft  optional 
with  the  parents  or  guardians.  Those  who 
were  to  be  instructed  in  them  should  be 
entered  for  a  longer  terra,  but  if  this  was  a 
subject  of  previous  calculation  no  confusion 
would  arise  from  it.  The  routine  of  the 
exercises,  being  established  by  the  laws  of 
the  institution,  would  be  uniform,  and  pub- 
licly known  ;  and  those  who  were  previously 
acquainted  with  the  branches  first  taught 


32 


might  enter  the  higher  classes ;  nor  would 
those  who  entered  the  lowest  be  obliged  to 
remain  during  the  three  years.  Thus  the 
term  of  remaining  at  the  institution  might 
be  either  one,  two,  three,  four,  or  more  years, 
and  that  without  interfering  with  the  reg- 
ularity and  uniformity  of  its  proceedings. 

The  writer  has  now  given  a  sketch  of  her 
plan.  She  has  by  no  means  expressed  all 
the  ideas  which  occurred  to  her  concerning 
it.  She  wished  to  be  as  concise  as  possible, 
and  yet  afford  conviction  that  it  is  practic- 
able to  organize  a  system  of  female  educa- 
tion which  shall  possess  the  permanency, 
uniformity  of  operation,  and  respectability 
of  our  male  institutions,  and  yet  differ  from 
them  so  as  to  be  adapted  to  that  difference 
of  character  and  duties  to  which  early  in- 
struction should  form  the  softer  sex. 

It  now  remains  to  inquire  more  partic- 
ularly what  would  be  the  benefits  resulting 
from  such  a  system. 


BENEFITS    OF    FEMALE    SEMINARIES. 

In  inquiring  concerning  the  benefits  of 
the  plan  proposed,  I  shall  proceed  upon  the 


supposition   that  female  seminaries  will  be 
patronized  throughout  our  country. 

Nor  is  it  altogether  a  visionary  supposition. 
If  one  seminary  should  he  well  organized 
its  advantages  would  he  found  so  great  that 
others  would  soon  he  instituted,  and  that 
sufficient  patronage  can  be  found  to  put  one 
in  operation  may  be  presumed  from  its  rea- 
sonableness, and  from  the  public  opinion 
with  regard  to  the  present  mode  of  female 
education.  It  is  from  an  intimate  acquaint- 
ance with  those  parts  of  our  country  where 
education  is  said  to  nourish  most  that  the 
writer  has  drawn  her  picture  of  the  present 
state  of  female  instruction,  and  she  knows 
that  she  is  not  alone  in  perceiving  or  de- 
ploring its  faults.  Her  sentiments  are  shared 
by  many  an  enlightened  parent  of  a  daughter 
who  has  received  a  boarding-school  educa- 
tion. Counting  on  the  promise  of  her  child- 
hood, the  father  had  anticipated  her  matu- 
rity as  combining  what  is  excellent  in  mind 
with  what  is  elegant  in  maulers.  He  spared 
no  expense  that  education  might  realize  to 
him  the  image  of  his  imagination.  His 
daughter  returned  from  her  boarding-school 
improved  in  fashionable  airs  and  expert  in 
manufacturing  fashionable  toys;  but  in  her 
conversation  he  sought  in  vain  for  that  re- 


34 


fined  and  fertile  mind  which  he  had  fondly 
expected.  Aware  that  his  disappointment 
has  its  source  in  a  defective  education,  he 
looks  with  anxiety  on  his  other  daughters, 
whose  minds,  like  lovely  bnds,  are  beginning 
to  open.  Where  shall  he  find  a  genial  soil 
in  which  he  may  place  them  to  expand? 
Shall  he  provide  them  male  instructors  ? 
Then  the  graces  of  their  persons  and  man- 
ners, and  whatever  forms  the  distinguishing 
charm  of  the  feminine  character,  they  can- 
not be  expected  to  acquire.  Shall  he  give 
them  a  private  tutoress?  She  will  have 
been  educated  at  the  boarding-school,  and 
his  daughters  will  have  the  faults  of  its  in- 
struction second-handed.  Snch  is  now  the 
dilemma  of  many  parents,  and  it  is  one 
from  which  they  cannot  be  extricated  by 
their  individual  exertions.  May  not,  then, 
the  only  plan  which  promises  to  relieve 
them  expect  their  vigorous  support  ? 

Let  us  now  proceed  to  inquire  what  bene- 
fits would  result  from  the  establishment  of 
female  seminaries. 

They  would  constitute  a  grade  of  public 
education  superior  to  any  yet  known  in  the 
history  of  our  sex,  and  through  them  the 
lower  grades  of  female  instruction  might  be 
controlled.  The  influence  of  public  sem- 


imiries  over  these  would  operate  in  two 
ways:  first,  by  requiring  certain  qualifica- 
tions for  entrance ;  and,  secondly,  by  furnish- 
ing instructresses  initiated  in  their  modes  of 
teaching  and  imbued  with  their  maxims. 

Female  seminaries  might  be  expected  to 
have  important  and  happy  effects  on  com- 
mon schools  in  general,  and  in  the  manner 
of  operating  on  these  would  probably  place 
the  business  of  teaching  children  in  hands 
now  nearly  useless  to  society,  and  take  it 
from  those  whose  services  the  State  wants 
in  many  other  ways. 

That  Nature  designed  for  our  sex  the  care 
of  children,  she  has  made  manifest  by  mental 
as  well  as  physical  indications.  She  has 
given  us  in  a  greater  degree  than  men  the 
gentle  arts  of  insinuation,  to  soften  their 
minds  and  fit  them  to  receive  impressions ; 
a  greater  quickness  of  invention  to  vary 
modes  of  teaching  to  different  dispositions; 
and  more  patience  to  make  repeated  efforts. 
There  are  many  females  of  ability  to  whom 
the  business  of  instructing  children  is  highly 
acceptable,  and  who  would  devote  all  their 
faculties  to  their  occupation.  They  would 
have  no  higher  pecuniary  object  to  engage 
their  attention,  and  their  reputation  as  in- 
structors they  would  consider  as  important; 


whereas,  whenever  able  and  enterprising 
men  engage  in  this  business,  they  consider 
it  merely  as  a  temporary  employment,  to 
further  some  other  object,  to  the  attainment 
of  which  their  best  thoughts  and  calcula- 
tions are  all  directed.  If,  then,  women  were 
properly  fitted  by  instruction,  they  would  be 
likely  to  teach  children  better  th.au  the  other 
sex ;  they  could  afford  to  do  it  cheaper ;  and 
those  men  who  would  otherwise  be  engaged 
in  this  employment  might  be  at  liberty  to 
add  to  the  wealth  of  the  nation  by  any  of 
those  thousand  occupations  from  which  wom- 
en are  necessarily  debarred. 

But  the  females  who  taught  children  would 
have  been  themselves  instructed  either  im- 
mediately or  indirectly  by  the  seminaries. 
Hence,  through  these  the  government  might 
exercise  an  intimate  and  most  benelicial 
control  over  common  schools.  Any  one  who 
has  turned  his  attention  to  the  subject  must 
be  aware  that  there  is  great  room  for  im- 
provement in  these,  both  as  to  the  modes  of 
teaching  and  the  things  taught ;  and  what 
method  could  be  devised  so  likely  to  effect 
this  improvement  as  to  prepare  by  instruc- 
tion a  class  of  individuals  whose  interest, 
leisure,  and  natural  talents  would  combine 
to  make  them  pursue  it  with  ardor?  Such 


a  class  of  individuals  would  be  raised  np 
by  female  seminaries.  And,  therefore,  they 
would  be  likely  to  have  highly  important 
and  happy  effects  on  common  schools. 

It  is  believed  that  such  institutions  would 
tend  to  prolong  or  perpetuate  our  excellent 
government. 

An  opinion  too  generally  prevails  that  our 
present  form  of  government,  though  good, 
cannot  be  permanent.  Other  republics  have 
failed,  and  the  historian  and  philosopher 
have  told  us  that  nations  are  like  individu- 
als; that  at  their  birth  they  receive  the 
seeds  of  their  decline  and  dissolution.  Here, 
deceived  by  a  false  analogy,  we  receive  an 
apt  illustration  of  particular  facts  for  a  gen- 
eral truth.  The  existence  of  nations  can- 
not in  strictness  be  compared  with  the 
duration  of  animate  life;  for  by  the  opera- 
tion of  physical  causes  this,  after  a  certain 
length  of  time,  must  cease;  but  the  exist- 
ence of  nations  is  prolonged  by  the  succes- 
sion of  one  generation  to  another,  and  there 
is  no  physical  cause  to  prevent  this  succes- 
sion's going  on  in  a  peaceable  manner  under 
a  good  government  till  the  end  of  time. 
We  must  then  look  to  other  causes  than  ne- 
cessity for  the  decline  and  fall  of  former  re- 
publics. If  we  could  discover  these  causes, 


38 


and  seasonably  prevent  their  operation,  then 
might  our  latest  posterity  enjoy  the  sarne 
happy  government  with  which  we  are 
blessed;  or  if  but  in  part,  then  might  the 
triumph  of  tyranny  be  delayed,  and  a  few 
more  generations  be  free. 

Permit  me,  then,  to  ask  the  enlightened 
politician  of  my  country  whether  amid  his 
researches  for  these  causes  he  cannot  discover 
one  in  the  neglect  which  free  governments, 
in  common  with  others,  have  shown  to  what- 
ever regarded  the  formation  of  the  female 
character. 

In  those  great  republics  which  have  fallen 
of  themselves  the  loss  of  republican  man- 
ners and  virtues  has  been  the  invariable 
precursor  of  their  loss  of  the  republican 
form  of  government.  But  is  it  not  in  the 
power  of  our  sex  to  give  society  its  tone, 
both  as  to  manners  and  morals?  And  if 
such  is  the  extent  of  female  influence,  is  it 
wonderful  that  republics  have  failed  when 
they  calmly  suffered  that  influence  to  be- 
come enlisted  in  favor  of  luxuries  and  follies 
wholly  incompatible  with  the  existence  of 
freedom  ? 

It  may  be  said  that  the  depravation  of 
morals  and  manners  can  be  traced  to  the  in- 
troduction of  wealth — as  its  cause.  But 


wealth  will  be  introduced  ;  even  the  iron 
laws  of  Lycurgus  could  not  prevent  it. 
Let  us,  then,  inquire  if  means  may  not  be 
devised  to  prevent  its  bringing  with  it  the 
destruction  of  public  virtue.  May  not  these 
means  be  found  in  education  ?  in  implanting 
in  early  youth  habits  that  may  counteract 
the  tempations  to  which,  through  the  in- 
fluence of  wealth,  mature  age  will  be  ex- 
posed? and  in  giving  strength  and  expan- 
sion to  the  mind,  that  it  may  comprehend 
and  prize  those  principles  which  teach  the 
rigid  performance  of  duty?  Education,  it 
may  be  said,  has  been  tried  as  a  preservative 
of  national  purity.  But  was  it  applied  to 
every  exposed  part  of  the  body  politic? 
For  if  any  part  has  been  left  within  the 
pestilential  atmosphere  of  wealth  without 
this  preservative,  then  that  part,  becoming 
corrupted,  would  communicate  the  contagion 
to  the  whole ;  and  if  so,  then  has  the  experi- 
ment whether  education  may  not  preserve 
public  virtue  never  yet  been  fairly  tried. 
Such  a  part  has  been  left  in  all  former  ex- 
periments. Females  have  been  exposed  to 
the  contagion  of  wealth  without  the  preserv- 
ative of  a  good  education,  and  they  con- 
stitute that  part  of  the  body  politic  least 
endowed  by  nature  to  resist,  most  to  com- 


municate  it.  Nay,  not  merely  have  they 
been  left  without  the  defence  of  a  good  edu- 
cation, but  their  corruption  has  been  acceler- 
ated by  a  bad  one.  The  character  of  women 
of  wealth  has  been,  and  in  the  old  govern- 
ments of  Europe  now  is,  all  that  this  state- 
ment would  lead  us  to  expect.  Not  content 
with  doing  nothing  to  promote  their  conn- 
try's  welfare,  like  pampered  children,  they 
revel  in  its  prosperity,  and  scatter  it  to  the 
winds  with,  a  wanton  profusion;  and,  still 
worse,  they  empoison  its  source  by  diffus- 
ing a  contempt  for  useful  labor.  To  court 
Pleasure  their  business,  within  her  temple, 
in  defiance  of  the  laws  of  God  and  man, 
they  have  erected  the  idol  Fashion  ;  and 
upon  her  altar  they  sacrifice  with  shameless 
rites  whatever  is  sacred  to  virtue  or  relig- 
ion. Not  the  strongest  ties  of  nature,  not 
even  maternal  love  can  restrain  them  !  Like 
the  worshipper  of  Moloch,  the  mother,  while 
yet  yearning  over  the  new-born  babe,  tears 
it  from  the  bosom  which  God  has  swelled 
with  nutrition  for  its  support,  and  casts  it 
remorselessly  from  her,  the  victim  of  her  un- 
hallowed devotion. 

But  while  with  an  anguished  heart  I  thus 
depict  the  crimes  of  my  sex,  let  not  the  oth- 
er stand  by  and  smile.  Reason  declares  that 


you  are  guiltier  than  we.  You  are  our  nat- 
ural guardians  —  our  brothers,  our  fathers, 
and  our  rulers.  You  know  that  our  ductile 
minds  readily  take  the  impressions  of  edu- 
cation. Why,  then,  have  you  neglected  our 
education  ?  Why  have  you  looked  with 
lethargic  indifference  on  circumstances  ruin- 
ous to  the  formation  of  our  characters,  which 
you  might  have  controlled  ? 

But  it  may  be  said  the  observations  here 
made  cannot  be  applied  to  any  class  of  fe- 
males in  our  country.  True,  they  cannot 
yet;  and  if  they  could,  it  would  be  useless  to 
make  them;  for  when  the  females  of  any 
country  have  become  thus  debased,  then  is 
that  country  so  corrupted  that  nothing  but 
the  awful  judgments  of  Heaven  can  arrest 
its  career  of  vice.  But  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  our  manners  are  verging  towards  those 
described  ;  and  the  change,  though  gradual, 
has  not  been  slow.  Already  do  our  daugh- 
ters listen  with  surprise  when  we  tell  them 
of  the  republican  simplicity  of  our  mothers. 
But  our  manners  are  not  as  yet  so  altered 
but  that  throughout  our  country  they  are 
still  marked  with  republican  virtues. 

The  inquiry  to  which  these  remarks  have 
conducted  us  is  this:  What  is  offered  by 
the  plan  of  female  education  here  proposed 


which  may  teach  or  preserve  among  females 
of  wealthy  families  that  purity  of  manners 
which  is  allowed  to  be  so  essential  to  na- 
tional prosperity,  and  so  necessary  to  the 
existence  of  a  republican  government? 

1.  Females,  by  having  their  understand- 
ings cultivated,  their  reasoning  powers  de- 
veloped and  strengthened,  may  be  expected 
to  act  more  from  the  dictates  of  reason  and 
less  from  those  of  fashion  and  caprice. 

2.  With    minds    thus  strengthened,  they 
would   be  taught   systems  of  morality,  en- 
forced by  the  sanctions  of  religion  ;  and  they 
might   be  expected   to   acquire  juster  and 
more    enlarged   views    of  their   duty,   and 
stronger  and  higher  motives  to  its  perform- 
ance. 

3.  This  plan   of  education  offers  all  that 
can  be  done  to  preserve  female  youth  from 
a  contempt   of  useful   labor.      The   pupils 
would  become  accustomed  to  it,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  high  objects  of  literature  and 
the  elegant  pursuits  of  the  fine  arts;  and  it 
is  to  be  hoped  that  both  from  habit  and  as- 
sociation they  might  in  future  life  regard  it 
as  respectable. 

To  this  it  may  be  added  that  if  house- 
wifery could  be  raised  to  a  regular  art, 
and  taught  upon  philosophical  principles,  it 


would  become  a  higher  and  morr-  interest- 
ing occupation;  and  ladies  of  fr  ^une,  like 
wealthy  agriculturists,  migM  f'  i«i  that  to 
regulate  their  busine  •-..  .vas  an  ag.-  oable  em- 
ployment. 

4.  The  pupils  might  be  expected  to  ac- 
quire   a    taste   for    moral    and    intellectual 
pleasures  which  would  buoy  them  above  a 
passion   for  show   and   parade,  and   which 
would  make  them  seek  to  gratify  the  nat- 
ural love  of  superiority  by  endeavoring  to 
excel  others  in  intrinsic  merit  rather  than 
in  the  extrinsic  frivolities  of  dress,  furniture, 
and  equipage. 

5.  By  being  enlightened  in  moral  philos- 
ophy, and  in  that  which  teaches  the  opera- 
tions of  the  mind,  females  would  be  enabled 
to. perceive  the  nature  and   extent  of  that 
influence  which  they  possess  over  their  chil- 
dren, and  the    obligation    which  this  lays 
them  under  to  watch  the  formation  of  their 
characters  with  unceasing  vigilance,  to  be- 
come their  instructors,  to  devise  plans  for 
their  improvement,  to  weed  out  the  vices  of 
their  minds,  and  to  implant  and  foster  the 
virtues.     And  surely  there  is  that   in  the 
maternal  bosom  which,  when  its  pleadings 
shall  be  aided  by  education,  will  overcome 
the  seductions  of  wealth  and  fashion,  and 


will  lead  the  mother  to  seek  her  happiness 
in  communing  with  her  children,  and  pro- 
moting their  welfare,  rather  than  in  a  heart- 
less intercourse  with  the  votaries  of  pleasure, 
especially  when  with  an  expanded  mind 
she  extends  her  views  to  futurity,  and  sees 
her  care  to  her  offspring  rewarded  by  peace 
of  conscience,  the  blessings  of  her  family, 
the  prosperity  of  her  country,  and,  finally, 
with  everlasting  pleasure  to  herself  and 
them. 

Thus  laudable  objects  and  employments 
would  be 'furnished  for  the  great  body  of 
females  who  are  not  kept  by  poverty  from 
excesses.  But  among  these,  as  among  the 
other  sex,  will  be  found  master-spirits,  who 
must  have  pre-eminence,  at  whatever  price 
they  acquire  it.  Domestic  life  cannot  hold 
these,  because  they  prefer  to  be  infamous 
rather  than  obscure.  To  leave  such  with- 
out any  virtuous  road  to  eminence  is  un- 
safe to  the  community  ;  for  not  unfrequently 
are  the  secret  springs  of  revolution  set  in 
motion  by  their  intrigues.  Such  aspiring 
minds  we  will  regulate  by  education ;  we  will 
remove  obstructions  to  the  course  of  litera- 
ture, which  has  heretofore  been  their  only 
honorable  way  to  distinction ;  and  we  will 
offer  them  a  new  object,  worthy  of  their  am- 


bition  :  to  govern  and  improve  the  semina- 
ries for  their  sex. 

In  calling  on  my  patriotic  countrymen  to 
effect  so  noble  an  object,  the  consideration 
of  national  glory  should  not  be  overlooked. 
Ages  have  rolled  away;  barbarians  have 
trodden  the  weaker  sex  beneath  their  feet ; 
tyrants  have  robbed  us  of  the  present  light 
of  heaven,  and  fain  would  take  its  future. 
Nations  calling  themselves  polite  have  made 
us  the  fancied  idols  of  a  ridiculous  worship, 
and  we  have  repaid  them  with  ruin  for  their 
folly.  But  where  is  that  wise  and  heroic 
country  which  has  considered  that  our 
rights  are  sacred,  though  we  cannot  defend 
them?  that,  though  a  weaker,  we  are  an 
essential  part  of  the  body  politic,  whose  cor- 
ruption or  improvement  must  affect  the 
whole?  and  which,  having  thus  considered, 
has  sought  to  give  us  by  education  that 
rank  in  the  scale  of  being  to  which  our  im- 
portance entitles  us?  History  shows  not 
that  country.  It  shows  many  whose  legis- 
latures have  sought  to  improve  their  various 
vegetable  productions  and  their  breeds  of 
useful  brutes,  but  none  whose  public  coun- 
cils have  made  it  an  object  of  their  deliber- 
ations to  improve  the  character  of  their 
women.  Yet,  though  history  lifts  not  her 


finger  to  such  a  one,  anticipation  does.  She 
points  to  a  nation  which,  having  thrown 
off  the  shackles  of  authority  and  precedent, 
shrinks  not  from  schemes  of  improvement 
because  other  nations  have  never  attempted 
them;  but  which,  in  its  pride  of  independ- 
ence, would  rather  lead  than  follow  in  the 
march  of  human  improvement  —  a  nation 
wise  and  magnanimous  to  plan,  enterprising 
to  undertake,  and  rich  in  resources  to  exe- 
cute. Does  not  every  American  exult  that 
this  country  is  his  own  ?  And  who  knows 
how  great  and  good  a  race  of  men  may  yet 
arise  from  the  forming  hand  of  mothers,  en- 
lightened by  the  bounty  of  that  beloved 
country,  to  defend  her  liberties,  to  plan  her 
future  improvement,  and  to  raise  her  to  un- 
paralleled glory? 

MlDDLEBURY,  1819. 


FEMALE   EDUCATION.* 

BY  MRS.  EMMA  C.  EMBURY. 

AT  the  present  period  of  society,  when 
the  light  of  knowledge,  no  longer  the  feeble 
glimmering  of  an  uncertain  dawn,  is  rapidly 
becoming  "brighter  and  brighter  unto  per- 
fect day/'  it  may  seem  idle  and  superfluous 
to  call  your  attention  to  so  hackneyed  a  sub- 
ject as  that  of  education.  But  permit  me 
to  observe  that  a  subject  of  such  vital  im- 
portance to  us,  both  as  individuals  and  citi- 
zens, can  scarcely  be  too  often  presented  to 
onr  view.  There  is  perhaps  no  country  in 
the  world  where  the  benefits  of  education 
are  so  fully  appreciated  and  so  widely  dif- 
fused as  in  our  own.  Schools,  both  public 
and  private,  have  multiplied  in  every,  part 
of  the,  Union;  and  even  our  common  semi- 
naries are  now  conducted  upon  such  enlarged 
and  liberal  principles,  as  were  formerly  un- 
known beyond  the  walls  of  a  university.  But 

*  An  address  delivered  at  the  Brooklyn  Collegiate  In- 
stitute for  Young  Ladies. 


even  in  this  enlightened  age  there  is  one 
point  which  yet  remains  somewhat  in  dispute 
— I  mean  the  education  of  females.  It  is  not 
long  since  the  belief  in  woman's  inferior 
capacity  was  at  least  tacitly  admitted,  and 
there  are  many  even  now  who  adhere  to  that 
belief;  but  let  us  inquire  what  domain  of 
human  knowledge  man  can  claim  as  his  ex- 
clusive right.  Is  it  the  boundless  field  of 
classic  lore?  Where  can  be  found  a  more 
indefatigable  laborer  in  that  fruitful  soil 
than  was  Madame  Dacier,  the  elegant  trans- 
lator of  Plutarch  ?  Is  it  the  rugged  steep  of 
science  ?  How  few  of  all  those  who  have 
toiled  up  that  ascent  ever  attained  such  an 
elevated  station  as  Maria  Agnesi,  the  young 
and  beautiful  professor  of  mathematics  at 
Bologna  ?  Is  it  the  thorny  road  of  political 
economy,  or  the  flowery  paths  of  general 
literature?  Who  has  ever  traversed  the 
former  with  such  masculine  vigor,  or  thread- 
ed the  pleasant  mazes  of  the  latter  with  such 
feminine  tact,  as  Madame  de  Stael,  the  won- 
der of  her  own  sex,  the  envy  of  ours  ?  Is  it 
the  fairy  -  laud  of  poesy  ?  Who,  since  the 
days  of  Shakespeare,  could  lay  claim  to  the 
title  of  the  "Poet  of  the  Passions,"  until  it 
was  proudly  won  by  Miss  Baillie?  Where, 
since  the  early  days  of  Campbell,  have  been 


found  more  sweetness  and  polish  tbau  in  the 
productions  of  our  universal  favorite,  Mrs. 
Hemans? 

From_the  almost  numberless  examples  of 
female  intellect  a  few  only  have  been  ad- 
duced, with  which  we  are  all  familiar,  and 
surely  they  are  enough  to  convince  any  un- 
prejudiced mind  that  Heaven  has  conferred 
upon  woman  no  less  than  upon  man  the 
gifts  of  talent  and  genius.  By  the  proper 
restraints  of  her  sex,  woman  is  prevented 
from  buffeting  the  waves  of  popular  preju- 
dice and  diving  into  the  depths  of  science 
after  the  yet  undiscovered  gems  of  truth  ;  but 
who  will  dare  assert  that  she  is  therefore  in- 
sensible to  their  value  or  incapable  of  grasp- 
ing them  f 

It  has  been  asserted  by  some,  whose  minds 
were  capable  of  a  much  wider  range  of  ob- 
servation than  the  remark  would  seem  to 
indicate,  .that  education,  though  it  always 
renders  man  an  ornament  to  his  station  in 
society,  in  variably  unfits  a,  woman  for  the  du- 
ties which  seem  to  have  been  allotted  her 
by  nature.  This  cannot  possibly  be  true. 
Our  ordinary  experience  certainly  affords  no 
proof  that  an  enlightened  mind  is  the  most 
prone  to  error ;  it  rather  teaches  us  that  they 
whose  eyes  have  been  opened  to  "see  the 


UNIVERSITY 


50 

right'7  seldom  will  voluntarily  "the  wrong 
pursue."  I  speak  uot  now  of  what  is  usu- 
ally termed  the  eccentricity  of  genius,  though 
that  might  be  referred  to  as  another  evidence 
of  the  necessity  of  a  proper  education ;  for 
were  talents  always  subjected  to  the  disci- 
pline of  the  schools,  we  should  not  find  a 
Mary  Wollstonecroft  pleading  the  cause  of 
immorality  and  atheism  under  pretence  of 
advocating  the  rights  of  women  ;  nor  would 
our  country  have  been  so  recently  insulted 
by  the  presence  of  a  woman  who  still  more 
boldly  tramples  upon  the  restraints  of  mod- 
esty and  decorum,  and  publicly  proclaims 
herself  the  "  apostle  of  infidelity."  These  are 
things  which,  if  they  were  the  result  of  men- 
tal cultivation,  would  induce  a  parent  to 
suppress  every  glimmering  of  intellect  in  his 
darling  and  innocent  child ;  but  we  need  no 
argument  to  convince  us  that  only  those 
who  have  been  "  nursed  in  darkness "  are 
prone  to  evil  rather  than  to  good. 

Another  objection  which  has  been  urged, 
with  some  apparent  truth,  against  the  pres- 
ent enlarged  system  of  female  education  is 
that  it  is  calculated  to  render  women  ped- 
ants and  bookworms  rather  than  useful 
members  of  the  domestic  circle  ;  but  to  con- 
fute this  we  need  only  recur  to  our  own 


personal  experience,  since  doubtless  there  are 
few  among  us  who  cannot  number  among 
their  friends  women  as  much  distinguished 
for  domestic  virtues  as  for  superior  and  ex- 
tensive acquirements.  Indeed,  is  it  not  ab- 
surd to  suppose  that  our  daily  repast  will  be 
less  grateful  because  intellect  and  elegance 
preside  at  the  social  board ?  or  that  household 
tires  will  burn  less  brightly  because  kindled 
by  a  torch  from  the  shrine  of  Minerva  ? 

The  true  cause  of  all  these  various  objec- 
tions appears  to  be  a  misconception  of  the 
term  education.  A  good  education  includes 
the  culture  of  the  heart  as  well  as  of  the 
mind.  It  implies  not  merely  the  improve- 
ment of  the  mental  faculties,  but  also  the 
government  of  the  passions  and  the  proper 
direction  of  the  affections.  We  should  not 
think  a  garden  beautiful  where  the  weeds 
have  been  allowed  to  grow  up  among  the 
flowers,  however  green  and  flourishing  it 
might  appear;  neither  should  we  deem  a 
woman  well  educated  whose  heart  was  the 
abode  of  folly  and  vanity,  however  her  mind 
might  be  stored  with  knowledge.  One  of 
our  best  writers  on  education  (herself  a  strik- 
ing proof  of  its  benefits)  has  compared  a  well- 
regulated  mind  to  a  watch,  where  every  part 
is  so  nicely  balanced  that  no  one  can  pre- 


52 


ponderate.  This  is  a  very  apt  illustration. 
Of  the  various  faculties  with  which  Heaven 
has  endowed  us,  each  may  be  perfect  in  it- 
self; but  from  some  error  in  our  adjustment 
of  them  (if  I  may  use  the  term),  all  may  be- 
come useless.  It  is  only  by  the  most  un- 
wearied self-discipline  that  this  correct  bal- 
ance of  mental  powers  can  be  eifected ;  and 
the  ability  to  discipline  one's  self  can  only 
be  derived  from  education. 

To  employ  the  rapidly -developing  facul- 
ties of  early  childhood  merely  as  sources  of 
amusement  to  ourselves  is  certainly  not  the 
proper  method  of  bestowing  upon  our  chil- 
dren the  treasures  of  wisdom  ;  yet  this  is  the 
course  usually  pursued.  If  we  would  reap 
the  rich  harvest  of  a  truly  good  education, 
the  work  of  cultivation  must  commence  at  a 
much  earlier  period  than  even  our  most  zeal- 
ous laborers  in  the  field  of  knowledge  would 
deem  necessary.  As  soon  as  a  child  is  capa- 
ble of  receiving  different  degrees  of  pleasure 
from  different  objects,  the  task  of  instruc- 
tion should  commence;  not,  however,  by 
means  of  dry  precept  and  tedious  disquisi- 
tion, for  these  would  be  incomprehensible, 
but  by  resorting  to  all  those  thousand  de- 
vices which  a  judicious  instructor  is  so  in- 
genious in  contriving,  in  order  to  inform  as 


well  as  amuse.  Every  opportunity  of  im- 
parting knowledge  should  be  eagerly  seized, 
for  knowledge  acquired  at  such  an  age  be- 
comes a  part  of  our  very  nature ;  and,  what- 
ever may  be  the  course  of  our  after-life,  the 
impressions  received  in  early  childhood  are 
never  totally  effaced. 

But  to  whom  is  the  sacred  and  laborious 
duty  of  early  instruction  delegated  ?  Is  it  to 
the  father,  who,  returning  from  his  daily  toil, 
seeks  in  the  bosom  of  his  family  that  peace 
which  never  abides  in  the  turmoil  of  the 
world?  Surely  not.  The  conflict  with  a 
hard  and  selfish  world  is  enough  for  him; 
the  duty  of  combating  with  rebellious  human 
nature  is  reserved  for  the  mother's  portion. 
No  father  can,  no  father  ought  to  know  how 
much  heaviness  of  heart,  how  much  weari- 
ness of  spirit,  the  mother  has  endured  in 
order  to  render  his  children  the  objects  of 
his  pride  as  well  as  of  his  affection.  To  fos- 
ter the  germ  of  mental  energy,  to  train  up 
the  early  shoots  of  intellect,  and,  more  than 
all,  to  watch  over  the  pure  fresh  feelings  of 
the  youthful  heart,  and  direct  its  innocent 
affections  to  "  things  above,"  so  that  it  may 
never  be  induced  to  "place  its  happiness 
lower  than  itself,"  these  are  the  ennobling 
duties  of  a  mother. 


But  can  these  duties  be  performed  by  the 
woman  whose  mental  energies  were  in  early 
youth  wasted  upon  the  fascinating  pages  of 
romance,  and,  in  later  life,  frittered  away 
amid  the  frivolities  of  fashion  ?  "  Never," 
observed  a  man  of  acknowledged  sense  and 
penetration,  "  never  have  I  known  a  man 
v  distinguished  for  wisdom  and  virtue  who 
was  the  son  of  a  foolish  mother."  This  is 
emphatically  true;  and  when  we  consider 
how  often  the  temper  and  dispositions  which 
we  falsely  ascribe  to  nature  may  be  traced 
to  impressions  received  in  infancy,  our  own 
experience  will  bear  testimony  to  its  truth. 
The  husbandman  who  should  scatter  his 
seed  among  the  dry  clods  of  an  uutilled  field, 
and  then  go  his  way  rejoicing  in  the  antici- 
pation of  a  rich  harvest,  would  be  far  more 
likely  to  reap  tares  than  wheat ;  yet  there 
would  not  be  more  folly  in  his  expectations 
than  in  those  of  the  well-meaning  but  in- 
judicious mother  who,  after  having  allowed 
the  precious  years  of  infancy  to  slip  by, 
fondly  hopes  to  gather  from  the  youthful 
mind  the  rare  fruits  of  virtue  and  religion, 
the  principles  of  which  no  previous  culture 
had  fitted  it  to  receive.  Education  must  be- 
gin in  infancy.  Even  in  the  nurse's  arms  a 
child  learns  to  distinguish  between  pleasur- 


able  and  disagreeable  objects ;  and  in  the 
same  manner — that  is  to  say,  by  making  ap- 
peals to  the  senses — may  it  be  taught  the  dif- 
ference between  right  and  wrong.  If  it  be 
true,  as  some  wise  men  have  asserted,  that  the 
first  ten  years  give  a  coloring  to  man's  whole 
life,  then  let  women  look  well  to  their  mater- 
nal duties,  for  awful  is  their  responsibility. 

Could  the  secret  biography  of  heroes  and 
sages  throughout  the  earth  be  correctly  as- 
certained, so  as  to  trace  the  progress  of  early 
education,  what  a  brilliant  lustre  would  be 
shed  on  the  maternal  character !  Even  in 
the  pages  of  general  history,  notwithstand- 
ing its  vague  and  unsatisfactory  sketches  of 
the  detail  of  life,  how  universally  do  we  find 
the  influence  of  women  made  manifest.  It 
is  recorded  of  the  greatest  orator  of  antiquity 
that  the  wise  and  politic  plans  which  it  had 
cost  him  years  to  frame  could  be  overturned 
in  a  single  day  by  a  woman;  and  Tacitus 
himself,  the  most  impartial  of  historians,  has 
not  hesitated  to  trace  the  degeneracy  of 
morals  under  the  emperors  to  the  period 
when  the  Roman  matrons  began  to  relin- 
quish to  slaves  and  hirelings  the  education 
of  their  children.  If  such  are  the  desolating 
effects  of  woman's  ill-directed  influence,  let 
us  reflect  for  a  moment  upon  the  incalculable 


benefits  which  might  be  derived  from  the 
same  powerful  force  when  exerted  in  its 
proper  direction.  Those  only  who  have  been 
long  accustomed  to  look  into  the  springs  of 
human  action  can  be  aware  how  much  the 
general  state  of  civilized  society  depends 
upon  the  sentiments  and  habits  of  women ; 
for  while  many  are  willing  to  admit  the 
powerful  effect  of  female  elegance  on  the 
manners  of  men,  few  will  as  readily  acknowl- 
edge the  influence  of  female  principles  upon 
their  character.  But  to  those  who  can  only 
be  taught  by  examples  we  can  give  one 
noble  evidence  of  the  advantages  of  woman's 
influence.  Let  us  recall  to  mind  the  history 
of  the  man  who  directed  the  destinies  of  our 
own  proud  and  happy  country — let  us  look 
at  the  moral  grandeur  of  his  character — let 
us  behold  him  gifted  with  the  heart  to  desire, 
the  intellect  to  plan,  and  the  hand  to  achieve 
the  freedom  of  an  infant  nation — let  us  ob- 
serve him  placed  at  the  head  of  that  nation, 
idolized  by  its  citizens,  respected  by  its  en- 
emies, admired  by  the  world ;  yet,  uncontam- 
inated  by  that  ambition  which  is  so  gener- 
ally the  offspring  of  power,  we  see  him  quietly 
resigning  that  proudest  of  all  titles,  the  ruler 
of  a  free  people,  and  returning,  with  his  early, 
simple  habits,  to  the  tillage  of  his  humble 


farm.  Yes;  let  ns  contemplate  in  every 
point  of  view  tlie  majesty  of  this  character, 
•which  stands,  like  the  pyramids  of  Egypt,  the 
unrivalled  object  of  a  world's  admiration, 
and  then  let  us  recollect  with  noble  pride 
that  the  character  of  our  illustrious  Wash- 
ington was  formed  by  his  mother. 

In  a  country  like  ours,  where  wealth  is 
continually  fluctuating,  where  the  fortune 
which  a  fa i her  bequeaths  to  his  son  to-day 
may  be  totally  consumed  by  some  sudden 
revolution  in  commerce  to-morrow,  the  only 
unalienable  property  which  can  be  bestowed 
upon  our  children  is  an  unblemished  name 
and  a  good  education.  Under  such  a  gov- 
ernment as  ours  the  latter  is  indispensable. 
Ours  has  been  called  a  nation  of  kings ;  and 
when  we  reflect  on  the  incalculable  mischief 
which  is  daily  effected  in  less  happy  countries 
by  unenlightened  rulers  and  an  ignorant 
populace,  we  may  form  some  idea  of  the  evils 
which  would  result  from  an  uninformed  and 
uneducated  sovereign  people.  The  little  boy 
who  climbs  his  father's  knee  and  lisps  his 
infantile  prattle  into  his  delighted  ear  may 
be  called  at  some  future  period  to  direct  the 
destinies  of  a  large  portion  of  our  fellow- 
countrymen.  The  path  to  distinction  is  open 
to  all,  however  lowly  their  station ;  for  the 


aristocracy  of  talent  is  the  only  aristocracy 
which  Americans  acknowledge  ;  and  this  we 
cannot  reject,  since  ifc  hears  'Heaven's  own 
signet  on  its  patent  of  nobility.  Is  it  not 
absolutely  essential,  then,  that  the  heart  and 
mind  of  every  child  in  the  community  should 
be  objects  of  earnest  solicitude  to  every  pa- 
triotic bosom  ?  "  The  old  systems  of  educa- 
tion are  good  for  nothing,"  said  the  First  Con- 
sul of  France  to  Madame  Campan,  when  he 
visited  the  school  under  her  direction. 
"What  is  yet  requisite  in  order  that  young 
persons  may  be  well  educated  in  France  f" 
continued  he.  "  Mothers"  was  the  emphatic 
reply.  "True,  madame,"  answered  Napoleon ; 
"letFrenchmeu,  therefore, acknowledge  their 
obligation  to  you  as  having  been  the  first  to 
educate  mothers  for  their  children."  Na- 
poleon well  knew  that  the  only  materials 
out  of  which  a  mighty  nation  could  be  formed 
were  rational,  enlightened,  educated  men  ; 
and  the  importance  of  female  influence  in 
early  life  could  not  possibly  escape  the  pen- 
etration of  such  an  adept  in  human  nature. 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood  when  I  thus 
earnestly  insist  upon  the  necessity  of  female 
education.  I  do  not  mean  that  our  daugh- 
ters should  be  rendered  capable  of  becoming 
teachers  of  classical  literature  or  professors 


59 


of  the  sciences;  but  I  would  have  them  in- 
timately acquainted  with  all  useful  branches 
of  human  knowledge.  I  would  have  them  / 
sufficiently  versed  in  the  learning  of  the  an- 
cients to  be  able  to  lay  the  foundation  of  a 
classical  education  in  their  sons;  I  would  / 
have  them  so  skilled  in  those  elegant  arts 
which  form  the  embellishment  of  life,  that 
they  may  be  able  to  improve  to  the  utmost 
the  developing  tastes  of  their  daughters; 
and,  above  all,  I  would  have  them  deeply  and 
thoroughly  imbued  with  the  knowledge  of 
the  Scriptures — the  wisdom  which  cornet h 
from  above — the  pure  and  holy  and  liberal 
principles  of  that  religion  whose  founder 
was  the  Redeemer  of  a  world. 

The  duty  of  a  mother  is  indeed  an  arduous 
one;  but  its  very  difficulty  renders  it  inca- 
pable of  being  transferred  to  other  hands. 
To  struggle  with  the  untamed  passions  of 
human  nature — those  passions  whose  early 
development  affords  the  most  convincing 
proof  that  the  heart  of  the  natural  man  is 
"  deceitful  above  all  things,  and  desperately 
wicked ;"  to  arouse  the  spirit  of  useful  in- 
quiry in  the  infant  mind ;  to  direct  that  in- 
quiry to  subjects  which  may  purify  the  heart 
and  elevate  the  intellect ;  to  impart  the  first 
notions  of  a  Deity,  and  afterwards  to  im- 


60 


prove  those  vague  ideas  iuto  a  love  and  rev- 
erence for  tlie  bountiful  Creator  and  Ruler 
of  the  universe  —  these  are  tasks  of  which 
no  father,  however  affectionate,  is  capable. 
They  require  woman's  opportunities,  wom- 
an's tact,  woman's  delicacy  j  and,  may  I  not 
add,  the  peculiar  devotedness  of  woman's  af- 
fection ? 

"There  is  none, 

lu  all  this  cold  and  hollow  world,  no  fount 
Of  deep,  strong,  deathless  love,  like  that  within 
A  mother's  heart.     There's  too  much  pride,  wherewith 
To  his  fair  son  the  father's  eye  doth  turn, 
Watching  his  growth.     Aye,  on  the  boy  he  looks, 
The  bright  glad  creature  springing  in  his  path, 
But  as  the  heir  of  his  great  name — the  young 
And  stately  tree;  whose  rising  strength  ere  long 
Shall  bear  his  trophies  well— and  this  is  love! 
This  is  man's  love! — what  marvel? — you  ne'er  made 
Your  breast  the  pillow  of  his  infancy, 
While  to  the  fulness  of  your  heart's  glad  heavings 
His  fair  cheek  rose  and  fell;  and  his  bright  hair 
Waved  softly  to  your  breath! — you  ne'er  kept  watch 
Beside  him,  till  the  last  pale  star  had  set, 
And  morn,  all  dazzling,  as  in  triumph,  broke 
On  your  dim  weary  eyes  ; — not  yours  the  face 
That,  early  faded  through  fond  care  of  him, 
Hung  o'er  his  sleep,  and,  duly  as  Heaven's  light, 
Was  there  to  greet  his  wakening! — you  ne'er  smoothed 
His  couch,  ne'er  sung  him  to  his  rosy  rest, 
Caught  his  least  whisper,  when  his  voice  from  yours 
Had  learned  soft  utterance  ;  pressed  your  lips  to  his, 
When  fever  parched  it;  hushed  his  wayward  cries 
With  patient,  vigilant,  never  wearied  love! 
No,  these  are  woman's  tasks!"* 

*  Mrs.  Hemans. 


61 


Bat  these  are  not  all.  Were  a  mother's 
cares  confined  to  the  mere  physical  welfare 
of  her  sons,  too  often  in  later  life,  when  she 
saw  the  objects  of  her  solicitude  swallowed 
up  in  the  ever  yawning  vortex  of  vice,  would 
she  be  compelled  to  exclaim,  with  all  the 
bitterness  of  disappointment, 

"My  boys!  my  boys! 

Hath  vain  affection  borne  with  all  for  this? 
Why  were  ye  given  me?  .  .  ." 

It  is  not  so— her  duties  are  of  a  higher  or- 
der. Beautiful  as  is  the  picture  of  woman's 
tenderness  which  I  have  just  presented  to 
yon,  it  was  far  exceeded  in  moral  beauty  by 
the  exquisite  description  of  an  enlightened 
and  pious  mother,  which  not  long  ago  was 
uttered  within  these  very  walls,*  by  lips  that 
seemed  touched  with  u  a  live  coal  from  the 
altar."  If  it  be  true  that  the  noblest  being 
in  the  scale  of  creation  is  he  who  has  the 
greatest  number  of  duties  to  perform,  then 
well  may  woman  rejoice  in  the  dignity  of 
her  station  ;  but  let  her  joy  be  mingled  with 
"  fear  and  trembling,"  and  let  her  so  perform 
her  allotted  task  that  in  the  day  when  all 
must  be  summoned  before  the  bar  of  God 

*  This  address  was  read  in  St.  Ann's  Church,  Brooklyn. 


62 


she  may  be  able  to  say,  in  the  emphatic 
words  of  Scripture,  "  Behold,  here  ain  I,  Lord, 
with  the  children  which  thou  hast  given  me." 

If  such  are  the  arduous  duties  of  a  mother, 
what  should  be  the  measure  of  gratitude 
which  she  has  a  right  to  claim  from  her  chil- 
dren? It  is  a  debt  like  that  we  owe  to 
Heaven — the  day  of  our  death  finds  it  yet 
uucaucelled. 

To  you,  my  young  friends,  I  would  ad- 
dress myself  in  the  language  of  deep  and 
earnest  interest.  You  are  now  at  that  de- 
lightful period  of  life  which  is  like  spring 
among  the  seasons,  redolent  of  beauty  and 
freshness,  and  giving  fair  promise  of  the  rich 
fruits  of  maturer  years.  Take  heed  the 
young  blossoms  be  not  blighted.  Call  to 
mind  the  countless  advantages  which  have 
been  bestowed  on  you  ;  reflect  upon  the  anx- 
ious solicitude  of  the  fathers  who  wait  to 
see  you  the  objects  of  their  pride  as  well  as 
the  sources  of  their  happiness:  remember  the 
cares,  the  exertions,  the  almost  heart-break- 
ing anxiety  of  the  mothers  who  have  guided 
your  infant  feet  to  the  threshold  of  the  temple 
of  knowledge,  and  then  press  forward  "  in 
the  race  set  before  you."  You  are  entering 
upon  a  noble  career.  The  pure  and  elevated 
and  holy  duties  which  are  peculiarly  a  worn- 


63 


ar^s  will  soon  claim  your  undivided  atten- 
tion. Let  me  pray  you,  therefore,  so  to  dis- 
cipline your  hearts,  so  to  cultivate  your 
minds,  so  to  purify  your  spirits  now,  during 
the  unbroken  leisure  of  youth,  that  the  hour 
of  trial  may  find  you  "  with  your  lamps 
trimmed  and  burning."  You  have  begun 
well ;  go  on,  then,  in  the  same  course  and  re- 
member that  "  of  those  to  whom  much  is 
given,  much  will  be  required;"  and  that  gen- 
ius and  knowledge,  while  they  lay  claim  to 
the  highest  honors  which  man  can  bestow, 
also  bear  with  them  the  highest  responsibili- 
ties both  to  God  and  man.  Science  is  now 
opening  to  you  her  richest  store  of  honor  and 
usefulness,  and  the  prayers  of  parents  and 
friends  are  following  you  when  you  are  ut- 
terly unconscious  of  them.  Pause,  then — in 
the  cool  freshness  of  the  morning  of  life,  be- 
fore you  wax  faint  in  the  noonday  heats — 
pause  and  form  for  yourselves  the  noble  res- 
olutions which  should  direct  your  future 
life.  Look  back  through  the  shadowy  vista 
of  past  years,  and  behold  what  are  the  foun- 
dations of  the  most  lasting  honors  of  men. 
Look  forward  with  the  eye  of  faith  to  the 
glories  of  the  promised  land;  and  while  you 
weigh  well  the  different  results  of  moral  con- 
duct, take  heed  that  ye  "  keep  your  hearts 


with  all  diligence,  for  out  of  them  are  the 
issues  of  life."  Form  your  taste  on  the  clas- 
sics, your  judgment  on  the  sciences,  and  your 
principles  on  the  book  of  all  truth.  Let  the 
dawn  of  your  being  be  hallowed  by  that 
pure  devotion  which  is  ever  an  "offering  of 
a  sweet  smelling  savor "  to  the  bounteous 
giver  of  all  good.  Let  the  first-fruits  of  your 
intellect  be  laid  before  the  altar  of  Him  who 
breathed  into  your  nostrils  the  breath  of  life, 
and  with  that  breath  a  portion  of  His  exalted 
spirit ;  and  while  your  life  furnishes  the 
most  striking  illustration  of  the  benefits  of 
education,  let  it  be  your  care  so  to  persevere 
unto  the  end  that  it  may  be  said  of  each  in 
her  own  peculiar  sphere,  "  Many  daughters 
have  done  virtuously,  but  thou  excellest 
them  all." 

1831. 


THE  COLLEGIATE  EDUCATION  OF 
GIRLS.* 

BY  PROFESSOR  MARIA   MITCHELL, 
VASSAR  COLLEGE. 

SOME  years  since  I  met,  in  travelling,  an 
intelligent  gentleman  who  was  interested  in 
the  cause  of  education.  It  is  good  to  get 
away  from  your  Dative  latitude,  even  if  tlie 
polestar  is  lower.  I  listened  with  great  in- 
terest to  the  expression  of  his  views,  which 
were  based  upon  surroundings  unlike  my 
own.  He  enlarged  upon  the  advantage  to 
the  country  which  would  result  from  a  great 
national  university,  and  he  described  it  in 
glowing  colors.  "  I  would  have  it  cost,"  he 
said,  "not  tens  of  millions,  but  hundreds  of 
millions."  "For  both  boys  and  girls,"  I 
said,  quietly.  He  paused  a  minute,  and  then 
said,  as  if  to  himself,  "Well — I  had  not 

*  This  paper  was  read  at  the  Congress  of  the  Associa- 
tion for  the  Advancement  of  Women,  held  in  Boston, 
October,  1880. 
5 


66 


thought  of  the  girls."   And  he  had  daughters 
only !     Let  us  think  of  the  girls. 


WHOM    SHALL    WE    HELP   TO    A    COLLEGIATE 
EDUCATION  ? 

Our  colleges  are  at  present  adapted  to 
what  in  England  would  be  called  the  "  upper 
middle  class."  Can  we  extend  their  oppor- 
tunities to  a  larger  number  ?  We  cannot 
put  every  girl  through  a  college  course.  In 
the  more  enlightened  States  elementary 
education  is  compulsory,  and  (theoretically) 
every  child  is  taught  to  read  and  to  write. 
To  watch  the  public  schools;  to  foster  in- 
terest in  the  subject  of  education ;  to  vote 
for  the  best  persons,  men  or  women,  as 
guardians  of  these  schools — these  are  our 
duties  to  all  classes,  but  more  especially  to 
the  very  poor,  to  whom  no  other  schools  can 
open.  We  cannot  in  this  age  make  the 
public  school  a  college,  although  it  would 
be  well  if  every  State,  like  Massachusetts, 
gave  to  the  few  who  intend  to  enter  college 
the  necessary  instruction  in  preparatory 
studies.  To  my  question,  "  Whom  shall  we 
help  to  collegiate  education?"  I  should  an- 
swer : 


67 


First.  Do  not  attempt  to  put  the  daughters 
of  the  very  poor  through,  a  college  course. 
It  is  barely  possible  that  a  rare  genius  may 
be  found  even  among  the  unworthy  poor, 
but  the  chance  is  so  small  that  we  shall 
waste  time  in  looking  for  it.  We  cannot 
hurry  the  processes  of  nature.  We  may  by 
rearrangements  and  modifications  change 
the  conditions  into  which  we  are  born,  but 
we  cannot  escape  them.  The  tree  of  slowest 
growth  is  the  family  tree ;  if  you  examine 
that  on  one  of  whose  branches  some  great 
name  hangs,  you  will  find  that  it  had  no 
mushroom  growth,  that  its  rings  can  be 
counted  by  hundreds. 

Second.  I  should  say,  also,  Do  not  aid 
the  sickly  girl  to  enter  college.  Harm  has 
already  been  done  in  this  way.  As  in  earlier 
days  the  feeble  boy  was  trained  for  the  pul- 
pit, so  there  is  to-day  some  tendency  to  send 
a  sickly  girl  to  college— partly  because  our 
girls'  colleges  are  governed  by  so  good  san- 
itary laws.  I  should  dissuade  the  delicate 
girl  from  the  attempt  to  take  a  regular  col- 
lege course.  Let  her  study  in  the  open  air! 
Let  her  take  a  regular  course  of  study  in 
out-of-door  practical  sciences — botany,  geol- 
ogy, mineralogy.  Let  her  exchange  the 
crochet  -  needle  for  the  needle  of  the  sur- 


68 


veyor's  compass.  The  study  of  nature  must 
be  study  with  nature ;  if  it  requires  one 
hour  with  hooks,  this  may  he  followed  hy 
two  hours  spent  in  hunting  an  insect  in 
green  fields,  or  in  gathering  shells  from  sea- 
washed  rocks. 

I  should  suppose  that  a  summer  science 
school  for  girls  would  he  a  good  institution. 
Let  a  number  of  students  club  together,  and 
establishing  themselves  in  a  healthy  and 
unfashionable  place,  study  its  natural  his- 
tory. Such  education  would  be  fragment- 
ary, but  a  little  of  science  is  as  valuable  for 
development  as  a  little  of  the  classics,  or  a 
little  of  mathematics  ;  and  the  theory  of  to- 
day is,  "  Taste,  even  if  you  cannot  drink 
deeply." 

Knowing  well-born,  well-bred,  and  healthy 
young  girls  who  are  prepared  to  enter  college, 
and  whose  means  are  not  quite  adequate,  let 
us  help  them.  But  the  hand  should  not  go  to 
the  pocket  without  some  direction  from  the 
head.  I  say  let  us  help  them,  for  I  deplore 
the  rash  impulse  to  take  up  one  bright  girl 
and  carry  her  through  a  college  course  by 
other  means  than  those  of  her  parents  or 
relatives.  We  take  her  from  the  very 
struggle  which  she  needs  for  her  growth. 
She  learns  to  expect  to  .be  held  up,  and  she 


ceases  to  stand  upright.  I  believe  a  girl 
loses  her  nicety  in  morals  who  looks  around 
to  see  who  is  coining  to  her  rescue !  She 
owes,  without  a  thought  of  payment. 

Do  not  aid  by  founding  prizes.  You  then 
add  an  artificial  struggle  to  that  which  is 
healthy  and  invigorating.  If  possible,  aid 
by  giving  manual  labor,  but  let  it  be  such 
as  shall  be  educating.  When  we  talk  of 
manual  labor  for  girls,  we  seem  always  to 
mean  household  duties.  A  college  student 
can  often  make  herself  useful  by  copying  for 
professors,  or  by  tutoring  slow  pupils,  as 
well  as  by  less  pleasing  domestic  work.  I 
thjuk  young  girls  at  colleges  where  land  is 
allotted  to  them  for  cultivation  might  raise 
and  sell  flowers  and  seeds.  Form  for  any 
young  girl  a  habit  of  earning  money,  and 
you  give  her  a  lifelong  advantage.  I  con- 
sider it  one  of  my  duties  to  the  young  women 
who  come  into  my  department  to  encourage 
a  respect  for  remunerative  occupation.  Why 
should  girls  be  brought  up  with  an  idea  that 
paid  labor  is  ignoble  f 

If  you  cannot  give  to  a  good  girl  a  chance 
to  work  her  way  through  college,  give  money 
into  her  hands.  Do  not  help  her  by  buying 
her  books,  by  paying  her  bills,  or  by  bestow- 
ing unsuitable  costume.  Let  her  learn  the 


70 


value  of  money.  Most  girls  would  prefer  a 
loan,  and  the  very  carefulness  to  repay  a 
loan  would  be  a  check  to  unnecessary  ex- 
pense. But  as  some  very  sensible  girls  are 
timid  about  a  loan,  I  should  say,  "  Give," 
but  give  just  the  amount  sufficient  to  bridge 
over  the  difficult  place ;  do  not  make  the 
journey  ruinously  easy.  Our  Vassar  girls 
receive  aid  from  a  fund  left  by  the  founder 
of  the  college.  Many  of  them  return  it  as 
soon  as  they  are  able,  for  the  use  of  the 
coming  classes.  It  is  small,  and  but  few 
can  receive  it  in  one  year.  I  would  increase 
the  number  who  can  receive,  rather  than 
the  amount  to  each  student. 

This  direct  aid  given  to  certain  students 
by  individuals  is  good,  but  it  is  limited  to 
exceptional  cases.  We  reverse  the  order  of 
nature.  We  are  careful  of  the  single  life, 
we  are  careless  of  the  type. 


HOW   SHALL  WE   MAKE   THE   HIGHER  EDUCA- 
TION  OF  WOMEN  STILL   HIGHER? 

I  never  look  at  a  group  of  teachers  such 
as  are  employed  in  the  colleges  for  girls  but 
I  am  reminded  of  the  expression  of  St. 
Ambrose  :  "  The  noble  army  of  martyrs." 


71 


The  work  of  a  teacher  should  be  such  as 
does  not  kill,  for  the  value  of  human  life  is 
quite  as  great  in  the  case  of  the  teacher  as 
in  that  of  the  student. 

The  pleasant  smile  with  which  a  young 
teacher  greets  her  class  as  she  enters  upon 
her  duties  should  become  more  serene,  more 
inspiring  at  middle  life.  But  how  can  it 
be  ?  I  find  that  the  number  of  students  to 
one  teacher  is  usually  fifty!  The  amount 
of  work  that  teachers  do  is  enormous. 
There  seems  to  be  no  "getting  through." 
They  work  five  or  six  hours  a  day,  and  then 
take  to  their  rooms  the  written  examina- 
tions and  problems  for  their  evening  recrea- 
tion. Besides,  a  good  teacher  does  infinitely 
higher  work  outside  of  tutorial  hours.  I 
have  sometimes  looked  at  the  variety  of 
work  done  for  some  young  girl — the  care- 
ful watching  over  her  health,  the  good 
counsel  given  in  morals,  the  patient  endur- 
ance with  loose  mental  habits — and  I  have 
said  to  myself,  "How  little  that  parent 
knows  the  enormous  return  which  he  gets 
for  his  moneyed  investment !" 

We  are  constantly  told  that  too  many 
women  become  teachers.  Yes ;  but  the 
number  would  not  be  too  great  if  fewer 
students  were  put  into  the  hands  of  one 


72 


teacher.  A  teacher  should  not  cease  to  be 
a  student ;  she  cannot,  with  safety ;  she 
should  have  time  for  new  acquisitions.  I 
would  not  say,  give  time  by  lengthening 
vacations;  but  I  would  say,  give  time  by 
lessening  the  number  of  students.  A  young 
girl  needs  the  companionship  in  her  classes 
of  a  few,  but  the  teacher  should  know  each 
pupil  individually.  According  to  rny  own 
idea,  the  proper  number  for  good  class  work 
is  ten ;  but  when  I  asked  a  professor  of 
Cornell  how  many  he  thought  best  for  class 
and  professor,  he  said,  "  Four."  Given  a 
small  class  and  a  teacher  of  any  magnetism, 
and  there  need  be  no  required  attendance. 

A  large  class  requires  much  routine  work 
to  enable  it  to  move  without  friction,  and  to 
some  persons  the  precision  of  military  drill 
is  the  poetry  of  motion.  I  mourn  over  any 
loss  of  individuality. 

We  should  increase  the  number  of  teachers 
by  lessening  the  number  of  students  to  each, 
and  diminish  the  number  by  retiring  the 
old  and  worn-out.  In  New  York  State  a 
judge  is  retired  at  seventy,  but  a  professor 
in  a  college  may  have  a  life  tenure.  The 
retired  teacher  should  be  pensioned.  It  is 
a  great  wrong  to  students  to  retain  the 
incompetent  teacher  who  would  gladly  rest; 


it  is  base  and  cruel  to  turn  off  the  old  teaclier 
penniless.  I  have  known  a  woman  whom 
every  one  respected  and  whose  pupils  loved 
her,  to  retire,  after  forty  years  of  labor  in 
one  school,  without  even  the  small  purse 
and  small  speech  usually  proffered  to  tho 
cast-off  clergyman.  And  this  in  Massa- 
chusetts. 

Our  colleges  are  too  expensive  for  the  class 
which  most  needs  them.  We  ought  to  reach 
the  large  middle  class.  We  do  not.  From 
the  great  City  of  New  York  there  are  usually 
ten  students  in  Vassar  College ;  and  as  many 
from  New  York  are  at  Vassar  as  at  any  other 
college.  If  we  take  out  of  New  York  life 
those  for  whom  Europe  is  the  college,  those 
for  whom  the  workshop  is  the  university, 
those  for  whom  society  is  the  universe,  we 
still  have  an  enormous  residuum  of  young 
women  who  should  be  studying.  For  these 
our  colleges  are  too  expensive.  The  cost  of 
a  girPs  education  is  much  greater  than  that 
of  a  boy.  Why  should  it  be  so  ?  Why 
should  not  girls  club  together,  board  them- 
selves in  a  wholesome  and  inexpensive  way, 
obtain  some  light  employment  which  will 
add  to  their  means,  and  dress  for  almost 
nothing?  I  touch  the  subject  of  expense  in 
dress  with  a  sinking  heart,  for  I  know  that 


74 


no  party  is  with  me ;  I  stand  almost  alone. 
We  need  organized  missionary  work  on  the 
subject.  Young  women  say,  "  It  is  our  duty 
to  look  pretty;"  and  one  would  suppose, 
from  the  attention  paid  to  it,  that  it  was 
the  highest  duty.  In  the  very  homes  whoso 
walls  are  unadorned  with  pictures  and  whose 
book-shelves  contain  no  standard  works,  the 
wardrobe  is  defended  on  aesthetic  grounds. 
I  have  visited  in  the  houses  of  English 
noblemen  whose  daughters  would  be  shocked 
at  the  expensiveness  of ~  the  college  and 
school  costumes  of  the  daughters  of  our  or- 
dinary mechanics.  This  is  a  question  of 
taste  only.  But  what  shall  we  say  of  that 
family  in  which  the  personal  decoration 
continues  to  be.  costly  after  financial  reverse 
has  come  to  its  head? 

I  hope  the  time  will  come  when  colleges 
will  be  alSle  to  give  up  the  pomps  and  pa- 
rades of  public  days.  Why  should  the 
conferring  of  degrees  at  commencement  be 
heralded  by  noisy  music?  Is  the  college 
commencement  a  necessary  evil?  Girls  need 
up  stimulus  to  work.  The  commencement 
ceremonies  are  in  the  thoughts  of  an  ambi- 
tious girl  from  the  time  she  enters  college 
until  she  graduates.  The  "  part "  at  com- 
mencement haunts  her;  the  college  degree, 


she  feels,  is  sure ;  but  for  the  sake  of  the 
loved  ones  at  home  she  hopes  and  works 
and  prays  for  what  she  considers  the  "honor." 
Is  it  a  healthy  influence  ? 

There  can  be  no  other  motive  for  great 
gatherings  at  colleges  than  that  of  indirect 
advertising.  The  guests  who  come  to  the 
college  see  nothing  of  its  methods  of  work- 
ing ;  they  see  the  college  building  and  its 
inmates  in  full  dress  ;  they  know  nothing  of 
the  unremitting,  hard,  conscientious  study 
which  is  done  behind  the  scenes. 

When  we  have  done  all  that  we  can  to 
lessen  the  expense  inside  the  walls  of  the 
college — when  those  of  us  who  have  longed 
for  college  education,  and  to  whom  it  has 
been  denied  for  want  of  means,  contribute 
our  small  aids — but  little  has  been  done  tow- 
ards bringing  the  colleges  within  the  reach 
of  the  large  middle  class  which  needs  them. 

What  our  colleges  need  is  endowment.  But 
I  would  not  have  it  take  the  shape  of  build- 
ings. Buildings  should  come  as  they  are 
called  for,  and  be  adapted  to  the  call.  Our 
colleges  should  not  be  monuments  to  the 
dead,  but  workshops  for  the  living.  There 
is  no  beauty  in  unfitness.  There  stands  on 
Calton  Hill,  in  Edinburgh,  a  temple  which 
would  delight  the  heart  of  an  old  Greek  by 


its  architectural  beauty.  It  is  the  astro- 
nomical observatory,  and  every  classic  orna- 
ment hides  the  height  of  the  stars  from  the 
observer. 

Thirty  years  ago  I  heard  Professor  Henry 
say  that  what  he  had  needed  was  a  simple 
office,  and  the  Government  had  put  him  into 
the  Smithsonian  Institute.  There  is  a  story 
of  a  distinguished  chemist,  who,  when  a  vis- 
itor asked  to  be  shown  his  laboratory,  turned 
to  the  servant  and  said,  "  John,  bring  in  the 
laboratory,"  and  it  was  brought  in  on  a 
waiter.  I  know  two  buildings  for  education- 
al purposes  which  are  exactly  adapted  to 
the  demand  of  the  hour.  Both  were  built 
by  women.  The  first  is  the  Woman's  Lab- 
oratory in  Boston,  where  every  cent  has 
been  spent  for  science  and  the  investiga- 
tions of  science.  The  second  is  the  build- 
ing of  the  School  of  Philosophy  at  Concord. 
It  is  a  plain  one-story  building;  its  outward 
decoration  the  vine  which  creeps  up  its  un- 
painted  sides ;  its  only  music  the  song  of 
birds.  It  shelters  the  summer  philosophers ; 
its  lookout  from  the  numerous  windows  is 
inspiring,  its  ventilation  is  excellent. 

What  our  colleges  need  is  such  endow- 
ment as  shall  bring  them  within  the  reach 
of  the  large  middle  class.  The  amount  of 


money  given  to  girls'  colleges  is  pitiably 
small.  The  endowment  of  all  the  girls' 
colleges  put  together  does  not  come  up  to 
that  of  Harvard  alone.  Why  are  not  our 
colleges  endowed?  Because  our  people 
do  not  quite  believe  in  that  kind  of  educa- 
tion for  boys ;  in  the  case  of  girls  there  is 
positive  disbelief;  the  tone  of  the  Press  is 
against  it. 

A  New  York  editor  once  said  to  me,  "  The 
highest  duty  of  a  woman  is  to  be  ornamental 
in  the  parlor."  He  forgot  that  the  majority 
of  women  have  no  parlors.  I  take  up  at 
random  newspaper  scraps,  and  I  read  : 

"Last  year  twelve  persons  in  the  United 
States  gave  an  aggregate  of  $3,000,000  to 
foreign  missions." 

"  Mr.  S gives  $25,000  for  charitable, 

benevolent,  and  educational  purposes  in  this 
country." 

These  scraps  do  not  unfairly  represent  the 
ratio  of  interest  felt  for  foreign  missions  and 
home  schools ;  very  rarely  is  anything  given 
directly  for  the  education  of  girls.  It  would 
be  well  if  something  of  the  missionary's 
spirit  and  the  revivalist's  zeal  came  into  our 
staid  and  decorous  methods  of  dealing  with 
educational  subjects.  To  my  view,  the  ad- 
mission of  women  to  school  suffrage  in  Mas- 


sacliusetts  is  a  very  great  gain  to  the  cause 
of  education.  Perhaps  it  is  larger  to  me  be- 
cause I  am  far  off,  thus  inverting  the  law  of 
optics ;  for  I  hear  it  spoken  of  as  small  gain 
in  Massachusetts.  But  it  is  eventually  the 
gain  of  all  that  we  ask  for  women  ;  it  is  the 
beginning,  and  the  best  beginning.  All 
that  women  ask  for  is  the  enlightenment  of 
our  present  rulers ;  the  foreign  -  born  boy 
takes  a  lesson  indirectly  from  the  women 
who  as  school  committee  visit  the  school. 
Massachusetts  was  better  prepared  for  school 
suffrage  than  New  York  can  be  for  a  long 
time.  The  women's  clubs  had  led  the  way. 
The  community  had  become  accustomed  to 
hearing  from  women,  had  learned  to  value 
the  opinions  of  women  ;  the  suffrage  move- 
ment had  reached  the  ears  of  women ;  the 
temperance  movement  had  gone  to  their 
hearts ;  women  had  already  become  the  lead- 
ing orators;  it  was  comparatively  a  little 
thing  to  drop  a  ballot  into  a  box.  When  all 
the  women  of  the  laud  are  roused  to  an  in- 
terest in  the  public  schools,  the  "hundreds 
of  millions"  for  women's  colleges,  or  for 
men's  colleges,  or  for  both  together,  will  not 
be  wanting. 


A  NEW  KNOCK  AT  AN   OLD   DOOR. 

BY  LUCIA  GILBERT  RUNKLE. 

Ix  my  morning  journal  stand  five  solid 
columns  of  advertisements  of  girls'  schools. 
"  It  is  fit,"  says  Mr.  Samuel  Pepys,  speaking 
of  some  new  gown  bought  for  his  wife, 
"  that  the  poor  wretch  should  have  some- 
thing wherewith  to  content  her."  But  it 
would  seem  that  some  hundreds  of  New 
York  wives  refuse  to  content  themselves 
with  these  manifold  educational  concessions 
of  the  Pepysiau  spirit.  For  heside  the 
journal  lies  a  petition,  very  fully  signed,  a 
large  proportion  of  names  being  those  of 
women,  which  reads: 

"  We,  the  undersigned,  residents  of  New  York  City  and 
neighborhood,  beg  leave  to  present  our  respectful  peti- 
tion :  That  in  view  of  the  present  state  of  public  opinion, 
both  here  and  in  other  countries,  touching  the  justice 
and  expediency  of  admitting  women  to  the  same  educa- 
tional advantages  as  men,  a  state  of  opinion  especially 
evidenced  by  the  recent  action  of  the  English  universities 
of  Cambridge  and  London,  and  in  view  of  the  influential 
position  of  Columbia  College  as  among  the  oldest  and 


most  richly  endowed  educational  institutions  in  the 
United  States,  and  preeminently  representing  the  in- 
tellectual interests  of  the  city  of  New  York,  you  will  be 
pleased  to  consider  how  best  to  extend,  with  as  little 
delay  as  possible,  to  such  properly  qualified  women  as 
may  desire  it,  the  many  and  great  benefits  of  education 
in  Columbia  College,  by  admitting  them  to  lectures  and 
examinations." 


To  many  sober  and  conscientious  persons, 
both  men  and  women,  this  demand  sounds 
absurd,  needless,  improper,  and  dangerous. 
But  do  these  objectors  remember  that  every 
appeal  for  a  better  female  education  seemed, 
in  its  day,  equally  preposterous?  It  is 
hardly  three  centuries  since  Mademoiselle 
Francoise  de  Saintonge  was  hooted  through 
the  streets  of  her  native  village  for  propos- 
ing so  disreputable  a  plan  as  the  establish- 
ment of  schools  for  girls  in  France,  and  her 
anxious  father  called  in  four  learned  doctors 
to  determine  whether  this  mad  idea  was  not 
due  to  her  possession  by  devils.  The  doc- 
tors pronounced  her  in  her  right  mind,  but 
her  pious  fellow-citizens  stopped  the  spread 
of  immoral  ideas  by  the  conclusive  argu- 
ment of  insults  levelled  at  the  teacher  and 
stones  addressed  to  the  pupils.  The  progress 
of  the  next  century  and  a  half  is  recorded 
in  Dean  Swift's  observation  that  men  con- 
stantlv  asked  each  other  whether  it  was 


prudent  to  choose  a  wife  who  had  good 
natural  parts,  some  sense  of  wit  and  humor, 
a  little  knowledge  of  history,  the  capacity 
to  relish  travels  or  moral  and  entertaining 
discourse,  and  to  discern  the  more  obvious 
beauties  of  poetry.  The  general  verdict,  he 
says,  was  agaiiist  such  attainments  in  wom- 
en, because  their  tendency  was  to  make 
wives  pretentious  and  conceited,  and  not 
duly  subject  to  their  husbands. 

Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  translating 
Epictetus  at  nineteen,  and  sending  her 
work  to  her  kind  friend,  the  Lord  Bishop 
of  Salisbury,  apologizes  at  length  for  at- 
tempting a  task  universally  pronounced 
unfit  for  a  woman,  and  certain  to  draw 
down  censure  upon  her  (excusing  herself, 
however,  by  citing  the  opinions  of  Erasmus, 
in  the  Latin!).  Nearly  fifty  years  after- 
wards, in  advising  her  daughter  concerning 
the  education  of  a  bright  little  namesake, 
she  entreats  that  free  scope  may  be  ac- 
corded the  child's  capacity,  for  the  sake  of 
the  pure  delight  of  learning  and  of  her 
future  happiness.  But  she  adds  the  warn- 
ing that,  to  insure  a  satisfactory  marriage, 
the  young  girl's  wit  and  acquirements  must 
be  as  carefully  concealed  as  a  deformity 
from  a  world  which  suspected  or  despised  a 
6 


82 


learned  woman.  So  strong,  almost  to  our 
day,  has  been  tbis  balf-couscious  contempt 
of  tbe  feminine  mentality,  that  even  Charles 
Lamb,  that  gentle  and  charitable  so al,  could 
speak  of  "L.  E.L."  with  an  unmanly  sneer, 
and  declare  that  a  female  poet,  or  female 
author  of  any  kind,  invited  disrespect. 

It  is  but  ninety  years  since  an  English- 
woman, the  famous  Mary  Wollstonecroft, 
published  the  first  serious  demand  for  the 
higher  education  of  Englishwomen.  Her 
public  found  the  book  immodest,  irreligious, 
anarchic.  Issued  to-day,  it  would  appear 
a  harmless  plea,  a  trifle  heavy  and  conserv- 
ative, perhaps,  for  the  thorough  cultivation 
of  the  female  mind,  urged  on  social,  moral, 
and  religious  grounds,  and  protesting  against 
the  sentimental  ism  of  Rousseau  and  the 
now  forgotten  Dr.  Gregory.  Mrs.  Hannah 
More's  dull  novel  of  "Ccelebs  in  Search  of 
a  Wife,"  issued  in  1808,  contained,  perhaps, 
the  first  argument  in  fiction  that  a  ninny  is 
not  necessarily  the  ideal  wife,  or  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  Latin  grammar  incompatible 
with  a  turn  for  house-keeping. 

It  was  no  scoffer,  but  the  sweet-spirited 
Fenelou,  who  taught  that  contact  with 
learning  would  be  almost  as  fatal  to  wom- 
anly delicacy  as  contact  with  vice.  To 


Voltaire's  love  of  epigram  might  be  pardoued 
his  saying  that  "Ideas  are  like  beards;  wom- 
en and  young  men  have  none."  But  Lessing 
was  serious  when  he  declared  that  "The 
woman  who  thinks  is  like  the  man  who 
puts  on  rouge,  ridiculous."  And  even  Nie- 
buhr,  the  large-minded,  believed  that  he 
should  not  have  educated  a  girl  well,  for  he 
should  have  made  her  know  too  much. 

It  was  the  first  care  of  the  Pilgrim  Fa- 
thers to  establish  schools.  Girls  were  al- 
lowed to  attend  these,  two  hours  a  day. 
But  afterwards  the  system  was  remodelled 
in  a  spirit  of  wide  liberality,  and  girls  were 
suffered  all  day — in  the  summer.  When 
women  teachers  came  to  be  employed,  they 
were  required  to  "  teach  the  English  lan- 
guage correctly  and  the  rudiments  of  arith- 
metic." In  1826,  after  a  discussion  of  three 
years,  the  city  fathers  of  Boston  resolved  to 
establish  a  high -school  for  girls  on  the 
model  of  its  admirable  high-school  for  boys. 
But  such  an  army  of  young  women  battered 
the  gates  of  that  educational  heaven  with 
storms  of  prayers  that,  after  a  trial  of 
eighteen  mouths,  the  dismayed  corporation 
decided — to  enlarge  the  building  and  mul- 
tiply teachers?  No,  but  to  close  the  school 
altogether. 


84 


We  smile  at  Monsieur  de  Sainlonge  and 

the  sages  of  Boston.  The  two  hundred  and 
fifty  advertisements  refute  the  ancient  preju- 
dices. The  innumerable  names  of  women 
who  have  conquered  success  in  literature, 
science,  art  j  as  great  organizers,  administra- 
tors, educators,  refute  them.  The  very  dis- 
cussion of  the  hour  puts  them  to  silence,  for 
it  declares  that  the  question  is  no  longer 
whether  women  are  worth  educating,  but 
what  education  is  worth  most  to  them. 
The  point  of  view  is  changed  because  the 
social  conditions  are  changed. 

If  the  cultivated  judgment  of  ages  held 
the  female  understanding  to  be  inferior, 
doubtless  it  was  inferior.  Without  incen- 
tives, means,  or  opportunities  for  growth, 
the  mind  of  woman  did  not  grow.  And 
these  helps  were  denied  her,  not  by  any 
mean  desire  of  man  to  defraud  her,  not  by 
any  divine  limitation  of  her  needs,  but  be- 
cause her  time  had  not  come.  Just  as  war 
and  slavery  have  been  inevitable  conditions 
and  natural  agents  of  human  progress,  so 
has  the  subjection  of  woman.  In  a  rude 
society  man  was  her  necessary  protector, 
she  his  helpless  dependent.  Some  sort  of 
marriage  utilized  the  capacity,  such  as  it 
was,  of  every  woman,  because  every  man 


needed  a  household  of  cheap  servitors.  If 
lie  fon ght  to  protect  his  property  in  wives 
and  concubines,  they  cancelled  the  debt  by 
labor.  Ignorance  was  their  normal  and 
necessary  estate.  So  long  as  the  exercise 
of  brnte  force  remained  the  chief  satisfaction 
of  man,  so  long  was  woman  insignificant. 
As  advancing  civilization  has  required  them, 
the  feminine  qualities  have  answered,  with 
growing  adequacy,  to  the  requirement.  But 
of  necessity  the  traditions  of  the  time  of 
man's  legitimate  supremacy  lived  on,  and 
still  survive  in  the  general  if  vague  notion 
that  something  external,  mechanical,  elee- 
mosynary, must  he  done  continually  for 
woman  ;  whereas  the  modern  spirit,  which 
has  been  so  long  struggling  into  recognition, 
maintains  that  little  of  permanent  value 
can  be  done  for  woman  which  is  not  done 
by  woman.  Growth  is  from  within. 

In  his  attitude  of  guardian,  man — as,  in 
the  progress  of  time,  he  has  felt  the  need 
of  a  companion  and  ally  rather  than  of  a 
servant  and  toy — lias  gradually  released  to 
woman  the  freedom  of  certain  tracts  of 
knowledge,  finding  his  own  account  in  this 
concession.  And  if  he  has  not  hitherto  been 
ready  to  endow  her  with  the  whole  fair  do- 
main, neither  has  she  been  free  to  occupy 


it.  Ever  since  the  Old  Testament  matrons 
ground  the  corn  between  stones,  and  sewed 
the  skins  their  husbands  brought  home, 
and  baked,  and  brewed,  and  made  wine,  and 
taught  their  slaves,  and  tended  their  sick, 
and  reared  their  children,  and  adorned  them- 
selves to  find  favor  in  the  sight  of  their 
lords,  have  generations  of  women  found 
their  first  untroubled  rest  in  the  grave.  But 
now  machinery  does  half  their  work  at  half 
the  cost,  while  organization  still  further  re- 
lieves them  from  drudgery.  Moreover,  the 
great  increase  of  wealth  following  on  the 
arts  of  peace,  fosters  a  growing  class  of  un- 
employed and  luxurious  women,  free  to  use 
the  means  of  the  higher  education  which 
their  higher  needs  demand. 

How,  then,  shall  we  make  the  most  of 
that  great  indeterminate  factor  of  the  new 
civilization — the  feminine  intelligence  ?  It 
would  seem  self-evident  that  those  studies 
which  have  taken  their  place  in  the  higher 
education  of  man,  because  philosophy  and 
experience  found  in  them  the  surest  and 
readiest  means  of  symmetrical  mental  de- 
velopment, must  be  equally  valuable  to 
woman.  If  the  languages,  mathematics, 
modern  science,  logic,  metaphysics,  psychol- 
ogy, best  train  the  faculties  of  observation, 


87 


comparison,  reflection  ;  if  they  give  flexibil- 
ity and  strength  to  the  mind,  and  rnonld  it 
to  be  always  progressive,  always  acquiring 
more  knowledge  by  thoughtful  experience 
— ought  not  their  salutary  discipline,  as  ad- 
ministered in  college,  to  be  extended  to 
girls  ? 

It  is  answered,  first,  that  girls,  being  dif- 
ferent, do  not  need  the  same  training  as 
boys ;  second,  that  they  already  have  it ; 
third,  that  they  could  not  endure  it.  But 
whether  likeness  or  difference  predominates 
can  never  be  known  until  like  training  de- 
velop the  one  or  emphasize  the  other.  "  As 
long  as  boys  and  girls  run  about  in  the  dirt 
and  trundle  hoops  together,"  wrote  Sydney 
Smith,  "  they  are  precisely  alike.  If  you 
catch  up  one -half  of  these  creatures  and 
train  them  to  a  particular  set  of  actions  and 
opinions,  and  the  other  half  to  a  perfectly 
opposite  set,  of  course  their  understandings 
will  differ,  as  one  or  the  other  sort  of  occu- 
pations has  called  this  or  that  talent  into 
action.  There  is  surely  no  occasion  to  go 
into  any  deeper  or  more  abstruse  reasoning 
to  explain  so  very  simple  a  phenomenon." 
Teachers  of  mixed  classes  agree  that  what 
profits  the  one  profits  the  other.  Seneca 
advocated  the  study  of  the  Greek  philosophy 


88 


for  women,  who,  lie  said,  Deeded  it  as  a  re- 
straint upon  their  more  impulsive  tempera- 
ment ;  and  Plutarch  urged  upon  his  country- 
women the  study  of  the  Greek  language  and 
literature  for  a  like  reason.  No  less  forcible 
is  Doctor  Johnson's  plea  for  this  culture — 
that  whatever  withdraws  us  from  the  power 
of  the  senses,  whatever  makes  the  past,  the 
distant,  or  the  future  predominate  over  the 
present,  advances  us  in  the  dignity  of  human 
"beings. 

The  education  of  women  is  notoriously 
defective  in  the  cultivation  of  definite  ideas 
and  the  training  of  the  judgment.  Famil- 
iarity with  scientific  methods  of  study  would 
dissipate  their  general  and  perilous  conn- 
deuce  in  "luck,"  and  in  that  impossible  con- 
dition known  as  "  about  right."  Of  directly 
practical  value,  also,  would  they  find  the 
capacity  to  deduce  a  conclusion  from  its 
premises,  to  estimate  the  worth  of  evidence, 
and  understand  the  nature  of  proof.  In 
every  household  affairs  come  daily  to  judg- 
ment requiring  more  or  less  scientific  knowl- 
edge and  a  scientific  habit  of  thought.  An 
exact  mental  training  would  mitigate  the 
evils  and  enlarge  the  best  possibilities  of 
woman's  existence. 

This  training  both  private   schools  and 


89 


high-schools  must  fall  short  of.  Girls'  high- 
schools  afford  four  years  of  what  is  projected 
as  an  eight  years'  term,  and  girls  are  ex- 
pected to  be  satisfied  with  what  is  merely  a 
preparatory  course  for  their  brothers.  Pri- 
vate schools  necessarily  reflect  the  indefinite 
and  various  demands  of  their  patrons.  Un- 
due stress  must  be  laid  upon  accomplish- 
ments, undue  cramming  must  be  encouraged, 
the  period  of  study  being  far  too  short;  the 
methods  of  teaching  must  be  empirical  rath- 
er than  scientific,  and  the  end  aimed  at  tem- 
porary and  unreal,  having  no  relation  to  life 
beyond  the  examination  and  the  class-room. 
Our  best  private  schools  are  indeed  admir- 
able, but  there  is  no  recognized  standard  of 
worth, and  the  bad  are  as  ten  to  one.  Besides, 
in  apparatus,  cabinets,  libraries,  and  profes- 
sorships, the  richest  among  them  is  poor, 
compared  with  the  richer  colleges.  There 
is  but  so  much  first-rate  teaching  capacity 
existent  at  any  one  time,  and  the  larger  sal- 
aries, honors,  and  pleasant  conditions  of  the 
colleges  inevitably  absorb  the  most  of  it. 
Agassiz  thought  that  a  young  student  would 
gain  more  from  coming  into  contact  for  a 
single  month  with  a  man  of  really  profound 
knowledge  on  any  subject  than  he  could 
from  many  months  spent  under  the  tutelage 


of  one  who  himself  knows  but  very  little 
more  than  he  attempts  to  teach.  But  the 
majority  of  teachers  fall  into  this  latter 
classification.  Even  the  women's  colleges, 
proposing  the  same  curriculum  as  the  men's, 
deserving  the  most  sincere  respect  for  their 
aims  and  their  successes,  must  long  he  ham- 
pered by  the  difficulty  of  securing  the  ablest 
teaching  talent  and  appliances.  The  best 
high-class  boys'  schools  are  conceded  to  be 
those  which  send  the  best  equipped  candi- 
dates to  the  universities.  Were  pupils  from 
the  girls'  schools  admitted  to  the  same  ex- 
aminations, there  is  no  doubt  that  their 
standards  and  their  methods  of  teaching 
would  immediately  advance. 

If,  however,  the  health  of  our  girls  is 
threatened  by  hard  study,  further  opportu- 
nities of  self-immolation  must,  of  course,  be 
denied  them.  The  average  health  of  board- 
ing-schools is  indeed  low.  From  the  graded 
and  normal  schools  girls  are  withdrawn 
more  frequently  than  lx>ys  by  reason  of 
physical  inability.  But  the  monstrousness 
of  the  prevailing  curriculum,  the  high  press- 
ure, bad  dressing,  bad  diet,  external  dis- 
tractions, and  the  almost  total  want  of 
healthful  exercise  among  girls,  explain  this 
difference.  The  experience  of  twelve  years 


at  Ann  Arbor,  of  eight  at  Cornell,  of  nine  at 
Boston  University,  of  much  longer  terms  at 
the  Ohio  colleges,  and  of  the  entire  existence 
of  Vassar  and  Smith,  testifies  to  a  constant 
improvement  in  the  health  of  their  girls, 
and  a  wholesome  and  preservative  power  in 
severe  study,  provided  the  conditions  are 
right. 

If  it  be  true  that  the  higher  the  civiliza- 
tion, the  more  nearly  is  companionship  of 
the  sexes  reached,  it  seems  a  paradox  that 
they  should  be  united  everywhere  except  in 
study,  the  most  refining  and  least  self-con- 
scious of  employments.  Yet  there  is  a  gen- 
eral feeling  that  some  vague  danger,  to 
manners  if  not  to  morals,  lurks  in  the  de- 
mand for  the  admission  of  girls  to  the  pre- 
cincts of  the  college.  When  the  trustees  of 
Cornell  were  debating  the  wisdom  of  accept- 
ing the  munificent  Sage  endowment,  with 
its  conditions,  their  committee  gathered  the 
opinions  of  nearly  all  the  educators  of  note 
in  the  country  as  to  the  feasibility  and  pro- 
priety of  opening  the  classes  to  women.  The 
speculations  of  the  officers  of  the  older  col- 
leges (inheriting  their  traditions  from  semi- 
monastic  institutions,  founded  and  admin- 
istered by  men  vowed  to  celibacy,  and 
dreading  the  influence  of  women,)  almost 


92 


j  uniformly  discouraged  and  disapproved  such 
a  step.  The  testimony  of  the  colleges  al- 
ready open  to  both  sexes,  of  academies  and 
high-schools,  in  the  hands  of  men  touching 
life  at  more  points,  with  equal  uniformity 
encouraged  it.  In  theory  it  was  averred 
that  the  girls  would  become  mannish,  or 
the  boys  effeminate;  that  TlnT'sEan d ard  of 
scholarship  would  be  lowered  in  concession 
to  feminine  limitations;  and  thaTT~senti- 
mentalism  would  be  developed,  with  a  con- 
sequent deterioration  of  morals.  In  practice 
it  was  proved  that  while  the  boys  acquired 

finer  manners,  the  girls  advanced  in  truth- 

%j  ^ 

fulness,  sincerity,  and  courage ;  that  the 
standard  of  scholarship  was  raised,  and  that 
the  predicted  period  of  sentimentalism, 
though  everywhere  overdue,  had  persistently 
failed  to  appear.  Cornell  took  the  forward 
step,  and  President  White  adds  the  great 
weight  of  his  own  approval  to  the  side  of 
the  innovators. 

By  some  subtle  process  of  reasoning,  quite 
inscrutable  to  the  ordinary  mind,  it  is 
maintained^  however,  that  though  co-educa- 
tion may  do  for  the  bucolical  regions  of 
Michigan  and  Cornell  universities,  the  me- 
tropolis, as  represented  by  Columbia  College, 
cannot  with  propriety  extend  her  lectures 


and  examinations  to  girls.  But  what,  then, 
shall  be  thought  of  Cambridge  ?  For,  after 
all,  the  experience  of  the  great  English  uni- 
versity offers  the  best  precedent,  since  the 
demand  upon  her  was  almost  identical  with 
that  made  to-day  upon  Columbia.  It  is, 
perhaps,  twenty-five  years  since  the  English 
advocates  of  the  higher  education  of  women 
began  to  feel  that  their  educational  advan- 
tages could  never  equal  those  of  men,  until 
not  only  the  subjects  taught  should  be  the 
same,  but  the  teachers  of  equal  and  equally 
acknowledged  ability.  In  ten  years  this 
feeling  organized  itself  into  the  opening  to 
them  of  the  Cambridge  local  examinations, 
which  are  simply  for  standing.  A  little 
later  the  famous  Girton  College  was  founded, 
its  object  being  "  to  hold  in  relation  to  girls' 
schools  and  to  home  teaching  a  position 
analogous  to  that  occupied  by  the  universi- 
ties toward  the  public  schools  for  boys," 
and  "to  obtain  for  the  students  of  the  col- 
lege admission  to  the  examinations  for  de- 
grees of  the  University  of  Cambridge,  and 
generally  to  place  the  college  in  connection 
with  that  University."  It  was  understood 
that  the  immediate  instruction  should  be 
given  daily  by  the  professors,  lecturers,  and 
fellows  of  the  University  and  its  colleges. 


The  new  college  went  into  operation  with 
six  students,  in  a  hired  building,  in  October, 
1869.  It  now  possesses  a  building  of  its  own, 
and  even  in  its  first  decade  recorded  the  ad- 
mission of  eighty -six  candidates,  of  whom 
nineteen  were  graduated  with  honors,  ac- 
cording to  the  university  standard,  and 
eleven  passed  the  examinations  which  qual- 
ify for  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts.  These 
examinations,  however,  presented  only  an- 
houor  standard,  and  it  was  not  until  Febru- 
ary, 1881,  that  the  liberal  action  of  the  Senate 
placed  women  students  of  Cambridge,  for  all 
practical  purposes,  upon  an  equal  footing 
with  men.  In  1875  Newuham  Hall  was 
erected  for  the  accommodation  of  women 
students  coming  to  Cambridge  to  avail  them- 
selves of  the  new  opportunities.  Newuham 
Hostel  was  presently  added,  and  the  two, 
constituting  Newnhain  College,  to-day  over- 
flow with  students. 

Following  on  the  Cambridge  success  came 
the  opening,  at  Oxford,  of  Lady  Margaret 
Hall  and  Souierville  College,  the  free  ad- 
mission of  women  to  the  examinations  of 
the  University  of  London,  and  the  granting 
of  liberal  opportunities  on  the  part  of  Edin- 
burgh, Dublin,  Glasgow,  Aberdeen,  Durham, 
and  St.  Andrews.  The  University  of  Lou- 


don  is  a  young  institution,  unhampered  by 
the  prejudices  and  restrictions  of  its  elders. 
"  Hence  it  has  been  able  to  take  a  more  de- 
cisive step  than  any  other  university  in  the 
direction  of  improvement  in  women's  educa- 
tion. For  several  years  it  tried  the  experi- 
ment of  a  special  examination  for  women, 
with  a  curriculum  framed  in  supposed  def- 
erence to  special  feminine  needs.  But  though 
many  women  availed  themselves  of  this  ex- 
amination, it  soon  became  evident  that  the 
successes  they  won  were  all  on  the  old  lines 
— in  classics,  science,  mathematics,  litera- 
ture ;  in  fact,  the  subjects  which  belong  to 
an  ordinary  course  of  liberal  education,  and 
not  in  any  of  the  special  studies  which  were 
presumed  to  be  appropriate  for  them  as 
women.  Moreover,  it  was  manifest  that -a 
distinctly  feminine  examination  was  not 
what  women  wanted ;  for  the  public  believed 
that  it  was  inferior,  or  specially  lenient, 
whereas  female  students  desired  to  have 
their  knowledge  and  intellectual  cultivation 
tested  by  the  ordinary  and  recognized  stand- 
ards, and  asked  for  no  special  tenderness  or 
favor.  Accordingly,  after  much  discussion, 
it  was  determined,  in  1877,  to  obtain  from 
the  crown  a  new  charter,  admitting  women 
on  exactly  the  same  footing  as  men  to  all  the 


9G 


degrees  in  all  the  faculties — arts,  laws,  medi- 
cine, science,  music — and  permitting  tliem 
to  receive  the  same  honors  and  degrees.  An 
increasing  number  of  women  has  each  year 
come  up  for  matriculation  and  graduation, 
and  some  of  the  successes  they  have  attained 
have  been  remarkable.  The  gold  medal  in 
anatomy — one  of  the  chief  aud  most  coveted 
prizes  in  the  medical  profession — was  won 
last  year  by  a  woman.  Another  came  out 
first  in  mental  and  moral  philosophy,  and 
the  proportion  of  women  who  pass  well  in 
the  examinations  is  much  greater  than  that 
of  the  men.  This,  however,  is  easily  ac- 
counted for  by  the  fact  that  at  present  the 
numbers  are  much  smaller,  and  are  necessa- 
rily made  up  of  students  of  exceptional 
ability  and  enterprise ;  whereas  the  crowds 
of  men,  of  course,  include  a  large  number 
of  the  rank  and  file  of  those  who  are  tread- 
ing the  usual  path  towards  professional 
life,  and  who  have  no  special  aptitude  or 
enthusiasm  for  study."  This  is  the  testi- 
mony of  J.  G.  Fitch,  Esquire,  inspector  of 
schools,  member  of  the  senate  of  London 
University,  and  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
educators  of  England. 

Professor    Jackson,  of    Trinity    College, 
Cambridge,  writes; 


97 


"Having  taken  classes  of  ladies  through  the  Ethics 
and  part  of  the  Metaphysics  of  Aristotle,  and  the  '  Re- 
public,' the  'Phaedo,'  and  the  'Philetus'  of  Plato,  I  can 
speak  in  the  very  highest  terms  of  their  industry  and 
capacity.  I  put  their  attention  to  a  severe  test,  as  I 
sometimes  lectured  for  an  hour  and  a  half,  and  even 
for  an  hour  and  three  -  quarters  without  interruption. 
As  a  proof  of  their  capacity,  I  may  mention  that  at  the 
end  of  the  Academic  year,  1877-78,  I  examined  some  of 
my  lady  pupils  in  the  Aristotle  papers,  which  I  was  giv- 
ing to  the  Trinity  men  who  graduated  in  1879,  and  the 
Plato  papers  which  I  was  giving  to  the  Trinity  men  who 
graduated  in  1880,  and  that  one  of  the  ladies  was  third 
in  Aristotle  and  first  in  Plato.  In  the  following  year 
another  lady  was  second  in  my  Aristotle  paper.  In  both 
cases  these  ladies  had  among  their  competitors  some 
of  the  very  best  men  of  the  time." 

J.  P.  Postgate,  Esquire,  M.A.,  Fellow  of 
Trinity,  and  Professor  of  University  College, 
London,  writes : 

"  The  performances  of  women  in  examinations  at  Cam- 
bridge and  elsewhere  I  look  upon  as  wholly  encouraging. 
The  standard  by  which  I  should  test  them  is  an  absolute 
one,  and  judged  by  that  they  show  work  which  is  intrin- 
sically good  and  worth  doing.  I  have  been  surprised  at 
the  numbers  of  first-class  and  other  distinctions  that  they 
have  gained.  Both  at  Cambridge  and  at  University  Col- 
lege the  women  not  unfrequently  beat  the  men  in  the 
lists.  Last  year  two-thirds  of  those  examined  in  Com- 
parative Philology  were  women  ;  and  a  woman  was  easily 
first  in  the  paper,  beating  another  very  good  candidate,  a 
man  who  has  since  taken  a  scholarship  at  Oxford,  I  be- 
lieve. She  did  extremely  well  in  the  paper,  and  has  been 
working  at  the  subject  since,  and  showing  a  very  remark- 
able linguistic  aptitude  not  merely  in  ancient,  but  in 
7 


modern  languages.  The  third  candidate  was  a  young 
lady  who  has  since  brought  out  a  Hebrew  grammar, 
which  I  believe  is  very  well  done.  She  also  distinguished 
herself  in  Greek  and  Latin. "  • 

From  the  otlier  colleges  eoine  equally  fa- 
vorable reports  of  feminine  application,  per- 
sistency, and  accomplishment.  Here,  then, 
are  some  hundreds  of  women  doing  the  same 
tasks  as  men,  submitting  to  the  same  tests 
as  men,  showing  at  least  as  good  work  as 
men,  without  injury  to  their  health.  For 
no  complaint  of  physical  inability  comes 
from  any  source;  while  at  Girtou  the  pleas- 
ant apartment  thoughtfully  provided  as  a 
hospital  for  the  delicate  women  who  were 
to  break  down  under  the  strain  of  constant 
brain-work  has  never  been  used  except  as  a 
room  for  examinations.  Equally  satisfac- 
tory is  the  testimony  to  the  moral  safety  of 
the  new  system,  not  the  slightest  suggestion 
of  impropriety  having  arisen. 

From  the  beginning  the  most  distin- 
guished men  in  England,  both  lay  and  cler- 
ical, have  been  most  friendly  to  this  move- 
ment for  the  liberation  of  learning.  At  a 
recent  distribution  of  prizes  at  the  Oxford 
higher  local  examination,  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  expressed  bis  great  gratification 
that  opportunities  for  the  highest  iustruc- 


.99 


tion  were  so  rapidly  opening  to  young 
women. 

The  fortunate  candidates  for  honors  or 
recognition  long  since  began  to  reap  sub- 
stantial benefits  from  having  received  the 
Cambridge  certificate,  not  only  in  being  pre- 
ferred as  teachers  or  governesses,  but  by 
commanding  better  salaries.  The  standard 
of  girls'  schools  has  been  perceptibly  ad- 
vanced, and  the  character  of  pupils  elevated, 
u  sentiinentalism  and  conceit  being  lessened, 
and  habits  of  order,  economy  of  time,  and 
interest  in  study  developed,  as  well  as  a  new 
sympathy  with  those  who  are  engaged  in 
the  graver  business  of  life." 

So  much  for  conservative  England.  What 
is  asked  of  New  York  ?  To  quote  from  the 
admirable  address  of  Dr.  Storrs  —  "that  a 
great,  distinguished,  opulent  institution  of 
learning  in  the  midst  of  this  metropolitan 
city,  which  has  received,  undoubtedly,  large 
endowments  from  the  direct  gift  of  women) 
or  under  their  influence,  should  give  them 
the  opportunity  to  pursue  the  higher  branch- 
es of  study,  under  the  care  of  the  teachers 
already  assembled."  Columbia  cannot  jus- 
tify their  exclusion  on  the  ground  that  Vas- 
sar  and  Wellesley  and  Smith  colleges  invite 
them.  Boys  are  intrusted  to  her  care  when 


100 


Harvard  and  Yale  exist,  because  New  York 
parents  prefer  that  home  influences  should 
accompany  college  training;  and  girls  do 
not  need  these  influences  less.  Besides,  the 
expense  of  girls'  resident  -  colleges  is  very 
great,  compared  with  those  of  a  richly  en- 
dowed institution  like  Columbia.  It  is  true 
that  the  charter  of  that  venerable  college 
did  not  contemplate  the  admission  of  girls. 
But  it  did  contemplate  the  enlightenment 
and  refinement  of  the  community.  And  it 
would  hardly  be  too  much  to  say  that,  in 
the  changed  conditions  of  our  time,  if  it 
were  necessary  to  discriminate  between  the 
sexes  in  the  matter  of  education,  the  cause  of 
morality  and  progress  would  be  better  served 
by  giving  the  higher  opportunities  to  women. 
The  question  of  co-education  is  not  even  to 
be  considered — at  most,  it  is  one  of  method 
only.  If  it  be  found  convenient  that  boys 
and  girls  should  listen  to  lectures  in  com- 
mon, as  at  Cambridge,  it  is  difficult  to  see 
any  sound  objection  to  that  economy  of  ^J 
teaching.  If  it  be  found  convenient  to  in-  ' 
struct  them  separately,  again,  as  at  Cam- 
bridge, criticism  is  equally  silenced.  The 
President  of  Columbia,  who  heartily  favors 
the  admission  of  girls,  says  that  the  college 
can  provide  for  them  separate  entrances, 


cloak-rooms,  and  class-rooms.  It  is  not  ap- 
prehended that  a  crowd  will  assail  the  doors. 
It  is  not  proposed  to  compel  the  many,  who 
have  no  desire  for  better  opportunities,  but 
only  to  invite  the  few,  who  now  stand  vainly 
waiting. 

The  spirit  of  justice,  of  course,  would  rest 
woman's  claim  to  the  highest  educational 
privileges  on  the  human  right  to  unrestricted 
growth,  for  souHs.  above  sex.  But  here,  as 
everywhere,  the  way  of  justice  is  the  way  of 
expediency.  Enlightenment  is  not  in  pro- 
portion to  the  amount  of  knowledge  on  de- 
posit at  any  one  time ;  it  is  in  proportion  to 
its  diffusion.  Because  of  the  devotion  of  the 
average  American  to  business,  the  mother 
and  the  school-mistress  mould  the  early  and 
sensitive  years  of  the  child's  life  to  what 
shape  they  must.  To  the  fitness  of  the  aver- 
age mother  and  school-mistress  for  this  high 
task,  what  wasted  powers,  what  mean  ideals, 
what  mistaken  views  of  life  bear  writness ! 
Raise  her  schools,  and  the  whole  standard  of 
woman's  existence  is  raised;  for  the  higher 
the  few  can  reach,  the  higher  the  many  rise. 
It  is  her  perverted  love  of  beauty  which 
makes  woman  extravagant.  It  is  her  uncul- 
tivated desire  for  the  higher  satisfactions  of 
art  which  makes  our  homes  museums  of  up- 


liolstery.  It  is  her  unenlightened  loyalty  to 
the  spirit  of  good  which  bids  her  cling  to  old 
abuses  that  were  once  uses,  to  harmful  su- 
perstitions that  were  once  faiths,  and  which 
to-day  constitutes  her  the  most  conspicuous 
bar  to  progress.  Tocqueville  says  that  he  as- 
cribes the  treachery  of  some  of  the  first  lead- 
ers in  the  reform  movements  in  France  to  the 
unhappy  influence  of  wives  and  sisters  on  hus- 
bands and  brothers.  The  claims  of  the  past 
and  their  own  private  interests  were  more 
to  them  than  the  welfare  of  the  struggling 
millions.  Their  perspective  was  in  fault. 
But  when  a  thorough  culture  and  a  trained 
judgment  are  added  to  the  " superlunary 
virtues"  of  women,  these  accusations  must 
fall. 

In  the  time  of  Cato  the  Censor  women 
raised  an  insurrection  to  obtain  the  privilege 
of  riding  in  chariots,  of  decking  themselves 
with  rings,  and  of  wearing  purple  robes. 
To-day  they  demand  the  outlook  of  a  broader 
humanity,  the  jew^Lofjii^h^culture,  the  roy- 
alty of  knowledge. 

1883. 


A  REVIEW  OF  THE  HIGHER  EDUCA- 
TION OF  WOMEN. 

BY  ALICE  FREEMAN  PALMER. 

AMERICAN  college  education  in  the  quar- 
ter-century since  the  Civil  War  lias  under- 
gone more  numerous  and  more  fundamental 
changes  than  befell  it  in  a  hundred  years 
before.  These  changes  have  not  occurred 
unnoticed.  A  multitude  of  journals  and  as- 
sociations are  busy  every  year  discussing 
the  results  of  the  experiments  in  teaching 
which  go  on  with  increasing  daring  and 
fruitfulness  in  nearly  all  our  colleges  and 
schools.  There  still  exists  a  wide  diver- 
gence of  opinion  among  the  directors  of  men's 
colleges  in  regard  to  a  variety  of  important 
questions:  the  conditions  and  proper  age 
for  entrance ;  the  length  of  the  course  of 
study;  the  elective  system,  both  of  govern- 
ment and  instruction  ;  the  requirements  for 
the  bachelor's  and  master's  degrees;  the 
stress  to  be  laid  on  graduate  work — these, 
and  many  sequents  of  these,  touching  the 


104 


physical,  social,  and  religious  life  of  the 
young  men  of  the  laud,  are  undergoing  sharp 
discussion. 

The  advanced  education  of  young  women 
is  exposed  to  all  the  uncertainties  which  be- 
set the  education  of  men,  but  it  has  perplexi- 
ties of  its  own  in  addition.  After  fifty  years 
of  argument  and  twenty-five  of  varied  and 
costly  experiment,  it  might  be  easy  to  sup- 
pose that  we  were  still  in  chaos,  almost  as 
far  from  knowing  the  best  way  to  train  a 
woman  as  we  were  at  the  beginning.  No 
educational  convention  meets  without  a  ses- 
sion devoted  to  the  difficulties  in  "  the  high- 
er education  of  women,"  so  important  has 
the  subject  become,  and  so  hard  is  it  to 
satisfy  in  any  one  system  the  variety  of  its 
needs.  Yet  chaos  may  be  thought  more 
chaotic  than  it  really  is.  In  the  din  of  dis- 
cussion it  would  not  be  strange  if  the  fair 
degree  of  concord  already  reached  should 
sometimes  be  missed.  We  are  certainly 
still  far  from  having  found  the  one  best 
method  of  college  training  for  girls.  Some 
of  us  hope  we  may  never  find  it,  believing 
that  in  diversity,  no  less  than  in  unity,  there 
is  strength.  But  already  three  tolerably 
clear,  consistent,  and  accredited  types  of 
education  appear,  which  it  will  be  the  pur- 


105 


poso  of  this  paper  to  explain.  The  nature 
of  each,  with  its  special  strengths  and  weak- 
nesses, will  be  set  forth,  in  no  spirit  of  parti- 
sanship, but  in  the  belief  that  a  cool  under- 
standing of  what  is  doing  at  present  among 
fifty  thousand  college  girls  may  make  us 
wiser  and  more  patient  in  our  future  growth. 
What,  then,  are  the  three  types,  and  how 
have  they  arisen  ? 

When  to  a  few  daring  minds  the  convic- 
tion came  that  education  was  a  right  of  per- 
sonality rather  than  of  sex,  and  when  there 
was  added  to  this  growing  sentiment  the 
pressing  demand  for  educated  women  as 
teachers  and  as  leaders  in  philanthropy, 
the  simplest  means  of  equippiug  women 
with  the  needful  preparation  was  found  in 
the  existing  schools  and  colleges.  Scattered 
all  over  the  country  were  colleges  for  men, 
youug  for  the  most  part  and  small,  and 
greatly  lacking  anything  like  a  proper  en- 
dowment. In  nearly  every  State  west  of 
the  Alleghanies,  "  Universities"  had  been 
founded  by  the  voluntary  tax  of  the  whole 
population.  Connected  with  all  the  more 
powerful  religious  denominations  were 
schools  and  colleges  which  called  upon  their 
adherents  for  gifts  and  students.  These 
democratic  institutions  had  the  vigor  of 


youth,  arid  were  ambitious  aud  struggling. 
"  Why,"  asked  tbe  practical  men  of  affairs 
who  controlled  them,  "  should  not  our  daugh- 
ters go  on  with  our  sons  from  the  public 
schools  to  the  university  which  we  are  sac- 
rificing to  equip  and  maintain  ?  Why  should 
we  duplicate  the  enormously  expensive  ap- 
pliances of  education,  when  our  existing  col- 
leges would  be  bettered  by  more  students  ? 
By  far  the  large  majority  of  our  boys  and 
girls  study  together  as  children;  they  work 
together  as  men  and  women  in  all  the  im- 
portant concerns  of  life;  why  should  they 
be  separated  in  the  lecture  -  room  for  only 
the  four  years  between  eighteen  and  twen- 
ty-two, when  that  separation  means  the 
doubling  of  an  equipment  already  too  poor 
by  half  f 

It  is  not  strange  that  with  tbis  and  much 
more  practical  reasoning  of  a  similar  kind, 
co-education  was  established  in  some  col- 
leges at  their  beginning,  in  others  after  de- 
bate, and  by  a  radical  change  in  policy. 
When  once  the  chivalrous  desire  was  aroused 
to  give  girls  as  good  an  education  as  their 
brothers,  Western  men  carried  out  the  prin- 
ciple unflinchingly.  From  the  kindergarten 
to  the  preparation  for  the  doctorate  of  phi- 
losophy, educational  opportunities  are  now 


practically  alike  for  men  and  women.     The 
total  number   of  colleges  of   arts   and  sci-         / 
eiices  empowered  by  law  to  give  degrees,     iX 
reporting  to  Washington  m  1888,  was  three 
hundred  and  eighty -nine.     Of  these,  two 
hundred  and  thirty -seven,  or  nearly  two- 
thirds,  were  co -educational.     Among  them 
are  all  the  State  universities,  and  nearly  all 
the   colleges   under  the  patronage   of  the 
Protestant  sects.* 

Hitherto  I  have  spoken  as  if  co-education 
were  a  Western  movement ;  and  in  the  West 
it  certainly  has  had  greater  currency  than 
elsewhere.  But  it  originated,  at  least  so  far 
as  concerns  superior  secondary  training,  in 
Massachusetts.  Bradford  Academy,  char- 
tered in  1804,  is  the  oldest  incorporated  in-  /  ./ 
stitution  in  the  country  to  which  boys  and  f/r 
girls  were  from  the  first  admitted ;  but  it 
closed  its  department  for  boys  in  1836,  three 
years  after  the  foundation  of  co-educational 
Oberlin,  and  in  the  very  year  when  Mount 
Holyoke  was  opened  by  Mary  Lyon,  in  the 
large  hope  of  doing  for  young  women  what 
Harvard  had  been  founded  to  do  for  young 
men  just  two  hundred  years  before.  Ips- 


*  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education,  1887-88, 
Chapter  xi. 


wicli  and  Abbot  Academies  in  Massachusetts 
had  already  been  chartered  to  educate  girls 
alone.  It  has  been  the  dominant  sentiment 
in  the  East  that  boys  and  girls  should  be 
educated  separate!}'.  The  older,  more  gen- 
erously endowed,  more  conservative  seats 
of  learning,  inheriting  the  complications  of 
the  dormitory  system,  have  remained  closed 
to  women.  The  requirements  for  the  two 
sexes  are  thought  to  be  different.  Girls  are 
to  be  trained  for  private,  boys  for  public 
life.  Let  every  opportunity  be  given,  it  is 
said,  for  developing  accomplished,  yes,  even 
learned  women  ;  but  let  the  process  of  ac- 
quiring knowledge  take  place  under  careful 
guardianship,  among  the  refinements  of 
home  life,  with  graceful  women,  their  in- 
structors, as  companions,  and  with  suitable 
opportunities  for  social  life.  Much  stress  is 
laid  upon  assisting  girl  students  to  attain 
balanced  characters,  charming  manners,  and 
ambitions  that  are  not  unwomanly.  A  pow- 
erful moral,  often  a  deeply  religious  earnest- 
ness, shaped  the  discussion,  and  finally  laid 
the  foundations  of  woman's  education  in  the 
East. 

In  the  short  period  of  the  twenty  years 
after  the  war  the  four  women's  colleges 
which  are  the  richest  in  endowments  and 


109 


students  of  any  iii  the  world  were  founded 
and  set  in  motion.  These  colleges — Vassar, 
opened  in  1865,  Wellesley  and  Smith  in  1875, 
and  Bryn  Mawr  in  1885 — have  received  in 
gifts  of  every  kind  about  $6,000,000,  and  are 
educating  nearly  two  thousand  students. 
For  the  whole  country  the  Commissioner  of 
Education  reports  two  hundred  and  seven 
institutions  for  the  superior  instruction  of 
women,  with  more  than  twenty -five  thou- 
sand students.  But  these  resources  proved 
inadequate.  There  came  an  increasing  de- 
mand, especially  from  teachers,  for  educa- 
tion of  all  sorts ;  more  and  more,  too,  for 
training  in  subjects  of  advanced  research. 
For  this,  only  the  best  equipped  men's  uni- 
versities were  thought  sufficient,  and  wom- 
en began  to  resort  to  the  great  university 
centres  of  England  and  Germany.  In  an  at- 
tempt to  meet  a  demand  of  this  sort  the 
Harvard  Annex  began,  twelve  years  ago,  to 
provide  a  few  women  with  instruction  from 
members  of  the  Harvard  Faculty. 

Where,  in  a  great  centre  of  education,  for 
many  years  books  have  accumulated,  and 
museums  and  laboratories  have  multiplied, 
where  the  prestige  and  associations  of  a 
venerable  past  have  grown  up,  and  culti- 
vated surroundings  assure  a  scholarly  atmos- 


\ 


phere ;  in  short,  in  the  shadow  of  all  tha.fc 
goes  to  make  up  the  gracious  influences  of 
an  old  and  honorable  university,  it  was  to 
be  expected  that  earnest  women  would  gath- 
er to  seek  a  share  in  the  enthusiasm  for 
scholarship,  and  the  opportunities  for  ac- 
quiring it,  which  their  brothers  had  enjoyed 
for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years. 

These,  then  —  co-education,  the  woman's 
college,  and  the  annex— are  the  three  great 
types  of  college  in  which  the  long  agitation 
in  behalf  of  women's  education  has  thus  far 
issued.  Of  course  they  are  but  types — that 
is,  they  do  not  always  exist  distinct  and  en- 
tire ;  but  they  are  rather  the  central  forms 
to  which  many  varieties  approximate.  The 
characteristic  features  of  each  I  must  now 
describe,  and,  as  I  promised  at  the  begin- 
ning, point  out  their  inherent  strengths 
and  weaknesses;  for  each,  while  having 
much  to  recommend  it,  still  bears  in  itself 
the  defects  of  its  qualities.  To  explain  dan- 
gers as  well  as  promises  is  the  business  of 
the  critic,  as  contrasted  with  that  of  the 
advocate.  To  this  business  I  now  turn,  and 
I  may  naturally  have  most  in  mind  the  Uni- 
versity of  Michigan,  my  own  Alma  Mater, 
Wellesley  College,  with  whose  government 
I  have  been  connected  for  a  dozen  years, 


and  the  Harvard  Aim  ex,  whose  neighbor  I 
now  am. 

Co-education  involves,  as  its  name  implies, 
the  education  of  a  company  of  young  men, 
and  women  as  a  single  body.  To  the  two 
sexes  alike  are  presented  the  same  condi- 
tions of  admission,  of  opportunities  during 
the  course,  of  requirements  for  the  degrees, 
of  guardianship,  of  discipline,  of  organiza- 
tion. The  typical  features  are  identical 
class-rooms,  libraries,  and  laboratories,  occu- 
pied at  the  same  time,  under  the  same  in- 
structors;  and  the  same  honors  for  like 
work.  Ordinarily  all  the  instructors  are 
men,  although  in  a  few  universities  profes- 
sorships are  held  by  women.  Usually  no 
dormitories  or  boarding-houses  are  provid- 
ed for  either  the  young  men  or  women,  and 
no  more  surveillance  is  kept  over  the  one 
than  over  the  other.  This  feature,  how- 
ever, is  not  essential.  At  Cornell,  Oberlin, 
and  elsewhere,  often  out  of  local  necessity, 
buildings  have  been  provided  where  the 
young  women  may — in  some  instances,  must 
— live  together  under  the  ordinary  regula- 
tions of  home  life,  with  a  lady  in  charge. 
But  in  most  of  the  higher  co-educational  in- 
stitutions the  principle  has  from  the  first 
been  assumed  that  students  of  both  sexes 


112 


become  sufficiently  matured  by  eighteen 
years  of  home,  school,  and  social  life — espe- 
cially under  the  ample  opportunities  for 
learning  the  uses  of  freedom  which  our  so- 
cial habits  aiford  —  safely  to  undertake  a 
college  course,  and  advantageously  to  or- 
der their  daily  lives.  Of  course  all  have  a 
moral  support  in  the  advice  and  example  of 
their  teachers,  and  they  are  held  to  good  in- 
tellectual work  by  the  perpetual  demand 
of  the  class  -  room,  the  laboratoiy,  and  the 
thesis. 

The  girl  who  goes  to  the  University  of 
Michigan  to-day,  just  as  when  I  entered  there 
in  1872,  finds  her  own  boarding-place  in  one 
of  the  quiet  homes  of  the  pleasant  little  city 
whose  interest  centres  in  the  two  thousand 
five  hundred  students  scattered  within  its 
borders.  She  makes  the  business  arrange- 
ments for  her  winter's  fuel  and  its  storage; 
she  finds  her  washerwoman  or  her  laundry ; 
she  arranges  her  own  hours  of  exercise,  of 
study,  and  of  sleep  ;  she  chooses  her  own  so- 
ciety, clubs,  and  church.  The  advice  she  gets 
comes  from  another  girl  student  of  sopho- 
moric  dignity  who  chances  to  be  in  the  same 
house,  or  possibly  from  a  still  more  advanced 
young  woman  whom  she  met  on  the  jour- 
ney, or  sat  near  in  church  on  her  first  Sunday. 


Strong  is  the  comradeship  among  these 
ambitious  girls,  who  nurse  one  another  in 
illness,  admonish  one  another  in  health, 
and  rival  one  another  in  study  only  less 
eagerly  than  they  all  rival  the  boys.  In 
my  time  in  college  the  little  group  of 
girls,  suddenly  introduced  into  the  army  of 
young  men,  felt  that  the  fate  of  our  sex  hung 
upon  proving  that  "  lady  Greek  "  involved 
the  accents,  and  that  women's  minds  were 
particularly  absorptive  of  the  calculus  and 
metaphysics.  And  still  in  those  sections 
where,  with  growing  experience,  the  anxie- 
ties about  co-education  have  been  allayed,  a 
healthy  and  hearty  relationship  and  honest 
rivalry  between  young  men  and  women  ex- 
ist. It  is  a  stimulating  atmosphere,  and 
develops  in  good  stock  a  strength  and  inde- 
pendent balance  which  tell  in  after-life. 

In  estimating  the  worth  of  such  a  system 
as  this,  we  may  say  at  once  that  it  does  not 
meet  every  need  of  a  woman's  nature.  No 
system  can — no  system  that  has  yet  been 
devised.  A  woman  is  an  object  of  attrac- 
tion to  men,  and  also  in  herself  so  delicately 
organized  as  to  be  fitted  peculiarly  for  the 
graces  and  domesticities  of  life.  The  exer- 
cise of  her  special  function  of  motherhood 
demands  sheltered  circumstances  and  refined 


moral  perceptions.  But  ta .  .  over  and 
above  all  this,  she  is  a  human  being — a  per- 
son, that  is,  who  has  her  own  way  in  the 
world  to  make,  and  who  will  come  to  suc- 
cess or  failure,  in  her  home  or  outside  it, 
according  as  her  judgment  is  fortified,  her 
observations  and  experiences  are  enlarged, 
her  courage  is  rendered  strong  and  calm, 
her  moral  estimates  are  trained  to  be  accu- 
rate, broad,  and  swift.  In  a  large  tract  of 
her  character — is  it  the  largest  tract  ? — her 
own  needs  and  those  of  the  young  man 
are  identical.  Both  are  rational  persons, 
and  the  greater  part  of  the  young  man's  ed- 
ucation is  addressed  to  his  rational  person- 
ality rather  than  to  the  peculiarities  of  bis 
sex.  Why,  the  defenders  of  co-education  ask, 
may  not  the  same  principles  apply  to  women  ? 
Wby  train  a  girl  specifically  to  be  a  wife 
and  mother,  when  no  great  need  is  felt  for 
training  a  boy  to  be  a  husband  and  father? 
In  education,  as  a  public  matter,  the  two 
sexes  meet  on  common  ground.  The  differ- 
ences must  be  attended  to  privately. 

At  any  rate,  whatever  may  be  thought  of 
the  relative  importance  of  the  two  sides — 
the  woman  side  and  the  human  side  —  it 
will  be  generally  agreed  that  the  training 
of  a  young  woman  is  apt  to  be  peculiarly 


weak  in  agencies  for  bringing  home  to  her 
the  importance  of  direct  and  rational  action. 
The  artificialities  of  society,  the  enfeebling 
indulgence  extended  to  pretty  silliness,  the 
gallantry  of  men  glad  ever  to  accept  the 
hard  things  and  leave  to  her  the  easy — by 
these  influences  any  comfortably  placed  and 
pleasing  girl  is  pretty  sure  to  be  surrounded 
in  her  early  teens.  The  co- educationists 
think  it  wholesome  that  in  her  later  teens  ,/ 
and  early  twenties  she  should  be  subjected 
to  an  impartial  judgment,  ready  to  estimate 
her  without  swerving,  and  tell  her  as  freely 
when  she  is  silly,  ignorant,  fussy,  or  indolent 
as  her  brother  himself  is  told.  Co-education, 
as  a  system,  must  minimize  the  different 
needs  of  men  and  women  ;  it  appeals  to 
them  and  provides  for  them  alike,  and  then 
allows  the  natural  tastes  and  instincts  of  ^1 
each  scope  for  individuality.  The  strengths  X 
of  this  system,  accordingly,  are  to  be  found 
in  its  tendency  to  promote  independence  of 
judgment,  individuality  of  tastes,  common- 
sense  and  foresight  in  self-guidance,  disin- 
clination to  claim  favor,  interest  in  learning 
for  its  own  sake  ;  friendly,  natural,  unro- 
mautic,  non-sentimental  relations  with  men. 
The  early  fear  that  co-education  would  re- 
sult in  class-room  romances  has  proved  ex- 


aggerated.  These  young  women  do  marry ; 
so  do  others;  so  do  young  men.  Marriage 
is  not  in  itself  an  evil,  and  many  happy 
homes  have  been  founded  in  the  belief  that 
long  and  quiet  acquaintance  in  intellectual 
work,  and  intimate  interests  of  the  same 
deeper  sort,  form  as  solid  a  basis  for  a  suc- 
cessful marriage  as  ball-room  intercourse  or 
a  summer  at  Bar  Harbor. 
:  The  weaknesses  of  this  system  are  merely 
the  converse  of  its  strengths.  It  does  not 
usually  provide  for  what  is  distinctively 
feminine.  Refining  home  influences  and 
social  oversight  are  largely  lacking;  and  if 
they  are  wanting  in  the  home  from  which 
the  student  comes,  it  must  not  be  expected 
that  she  will  show,  on  graduation,  the  graces 
of  manner,  the  niceties  of  speech  and  dress, 
and  the  shy  delicacy  which  has  been  en- 
couraged in  her  more  tenderly  nurtured 
sister. 

The  woman's  college  is  organized  under  a 
different  and  far  more  complex  conception. 
The  chief  business  of  the  man's  college, 
whether  girls  are  admitted  to  it  or  not,  is 
to  give  instruction  of  the  best  available 
quality  in  as  many  subjects  as  possible ;  to 
furnish  every  needed  appliance  for  the  ac- 
quirement of  knowledge  and  the  encourage- 


117 


ment  of  special  investigation.  The  woman's 
college  aims  to  do  all  this,  but  it  aims,  also, 
to  make  for  its  students  a  home  within  its 
own  walls,  and  to  develop  other  powers  in 
them  than  the  merely  intellectual.  At  the 
outset  this  may  seem  a  simple  matter,  but 
it  quickly  proves  as  complicated  as  life  it- 
self. When  girls  are  gathered  together  by 
hundreds,  isolated  from  the  ordinary  condi- 
tions of  established  communities,  the  college 
stands  to  them  pre-eminently  in  loco  paren- 
tis.  It  must  provide  resident  physicians 
and  trained  nurses,  to  be  ready  in  case  of 
illness,  and,  to  prevent  illness,  must  direct 
exercise,  sleep,  hygiene,  and  sanitation,  ac- 
cepting the  responsibility  not  only  of  the 
present  health  of  its  students,  but  also,  in 
large  degree,  of  their  physical  power  in  the 
future.  It  generally  furnishes  them  means 
of  social  access  to  the  best  men  and  women 
of  their  neighborhood ;  it  draws  to  them 
leaders  in  moral  and  social  reforms,  to  give 
inspiration  in  high  ideals  and  generous  self- 
sacrifice,  and  it  undertakes  religious  instruc- 
tion, while  seeking  still  to  respect  the  varied 
faiths  of  its  students.  In  short,  the  ar- 
rangements of  the  woman's  college,  as  con- 
ceived by  founders,  trustees,  and  faculty, 
have  usually  aimed  with  conscious  direct- 


ness  at  building  up  character,  inspiring  to 
the  service  of  others,  cultivating  manners, 
developing  taste,  and  strengthening  health, 
as  well  as  providing  the  means  of  sound 
learning. 

It  may  be  said  that  a  similar  up-building 
of  the  personal  life  results  from  the  training 
of  every  college  that  is  worthy  of  the  name  ; 
and  fortunately  it  is  impossible  to  enlarge 
knowledge  without,  to  some  extent,  enlarg- 
ing life.  But  the  question  is  one  of  direct- 
ness or  indirectness  of  aim.  The  woman's 
college  puts  this  aim  in  the  foreground  side 
by  side  with  the  acquisition  of  knowledge. 
By  setting  its  students  apart  in  homogeneous 
companies,  it  seeks  to  cultivate  common 
ideals.  Of  its  teaching  force,  a  large  num- 
ber are  women  who  live  with  the  students 
in  the  college  buildings,  sit  with  them  at 
table,  join  iu  their  festivities,  and  in  num- 
berless intimate  ways  share  and  guide  the 
common  life.  Every  student,  no  matter 
how  large  the  college,  has  friendly  access  at 
any  time  to  several  members  of  the  faculty, 
quite  apart  from  her  relations  with  them  iu 
the  class-room.  In  appointing  these  wom- 
en to  the  faculty  no  board  of  trustees  would 
consider  it  sufficient  that  a  candidate  was 
an  accomplished  specialist.  She  must  be 


this,  but  she  should  be  also  a  lady  of  unob- 
jectionable manners  and  influential  charac- 
ter; she  should  have  amiability  and  a  dis- 
creet temper,  for  she  is  to  be  a  guiding  force 
in  a  complex  community,  continually  in  the 
presence  of  her  students,  an  officer  of  admin- 
istration and  government  no  less  than  of  in- 
struction. Harvard  and  Johns  Hopkins  can 
ask  their  pupils  to  attend  the  lectures  of  a 
great  scholar,  however  brusque  his  bearing 
or  unbrushed  his  hair.  They  will  not  ques- 
tion their  geniuses  too  sharply,  and  will 
trust  their  students  to  look  out  for  their  own 
proprieties  of  dress,  manners,  and  speech. 
But  neither  Wellesley  nor  any  other  woman's 
college  could  find  a  place  in  its  faculty  for 
a  woman  Sophocles  or  Sylvester.  Learning 
alone  is  not 'enough  for  women. 

Not  only  in  the  appointment  of  its  teach- 
ing body,  but  in  all  its  appliances  the  sepa- 
rate college  aims  at  a  rounded  refinement, 
at  cultivating  a  sense  of  beauty,  at  impart- 
ing simple  tastes  and  generous  sympathies. 
To  effect  this,  pictures  are  hung  on  the 
walls,  statues  and  flowers  decorate  the 
rooms,  concerts  bring  music  to  the  magnified 
home,  and  parties  and  receptions  are  paid 
for  out  of  the  college  purse.  The  influence 
of  hundreds  of  mentally  eager  girls  upon 


tlie  characters  of  one  another,  when  they 
live  for  four  years  in  the  closest  daily  com- 
panionship, is  most  interesting  to  see.  I 
have  watched  the  ennobling  process  go  on 
for  many  years  among  Wellesley  students, 
and  I  am  confident  that  no  more  healthy, 
generous,  democratic,  beauty-loving,  service- 
able society  of  people  exists  than  the  girls' 
college  community  affords.  That  choicest 
product  of  modern  civilization,  the  Amer- 
ican girl,  is  here  in  all  her  diverse  colors. 
She  comes  from  more  than  a  dozen  religious 
denominations  and  from  every  political  par- 
ty; from  nearly  every  State  and  Territory 
in  the  Union,  and  from  the  foreign  lauds 
into  which  English  and  American  mission- 
aries, merchants,  or  soldiers  have  pene- 
trated.* The  farmer's  daughter  from  the 
Western  prairies  is  beside  the  child  whose 
father  owns  half  a  dozen  mill  towns  of  New 
England.  The  pride  of  a  Southern  senator's 
home  rooms  with  an  anxious  girl  who  must 
borrow  all  the  money  for  her  college  course 
because  her  father's  life  was  given  for  the 
Union.  Side  by  side  in  the  boats,  on  the 
tennis- grounds,  at  the  table,  arm  in  arm 


*  See  the  President's  Report  of  Wellesley  College  for 
1889-90. 


121 


on  the  long  walks,  debating  in  the  societies, 
vigorous  together  in  the  gymnasium  and 
the  library,  girls  of  every  grade  gather  the 
rich  experiences  which  will  tincture  their 
future  toil,  and  make  the  world  perpetually 
seem  an  interesting  and  friendly  place. 
They  here  learn  to  "  see  great  things  large, 
and  little  things  small." 

This  detailed  explanation  of  the  peculiar- 
ities of  the  girls'  college  renders  unneces- 
sary any  long  discussion  of  its  strengths  and 
weaknesses.  According  to  the  point  of  view 
of  the  critic  these  peculiarities  themselves 
will  be  counted  means  of  invigoratiou  or  of 
eufeeblemeut.  Living  so  close  to  one  anoth- 
er as  girls  here  do,  the  sympathetic  and  al- 
truistic virtues  acquire  great  prominence. 
*Petty  selfishness  retreats  or  becomes  extinct. 
An  earnest,  high-minded  spirit  is  easily  cul- 
tivated, and  the  break  between  college  life 
and  the  life  from  which  the  student  comes 
is  reduced  to  a  minimum. 

It  is  this  very  fact  which  is  often  alleged 
as  the  chief  objection  to  the  girls'  college. 
It  is  said  that  its  students  never  escape  from 
themselves  and  their  domestic  standard,  that 
they  do  not  readily  acquire  a  scientific  spir- 
it, and  become  individual  in  taste  and  con- 
duct. Is  it  desirable  that  they  should? 


That  I  shall  not  undertake  to  decide.  I 
Lave  merely  tried  to  explain  the  kinds  of 
limn  an  work  which  the  different  types  of 
higher  training-schools  are  best  fitted  to  ef- 
fect for  women.  Whether  the  one  or  the 
other  kind  of  work  needs  most  to  be  done 
is  a  question  of  social  ethics  which  the  fut- 
ure must  answer.  I  have  set  forth  a  type, 
perhaps,  in  the  endeavor  after  clearness,  ex- 
aggerating a  little  its  outlines,  and  contrast- 
ing it  more  sharply  with  its  two  neighbor 
types  than  individual  cases  would  justify. 
There  are  colleges  for  women  which  closely 
approximate  in  aim  and  method  the  colleges 
for  men.  No  doubt  those  which  move  fur- 
thest in  the  directions  I  have  indicated  are 
capable  of  modification.  But  I  believe  what 
I  have  said  gives  a  substantially  true  account 
of  an  actually  existing  type — a  type  power- 
ful in  stirring  the  enthusiasm  of  those  who 
•  are  submitted  to  it,  subtle  in  its  penetrating 
influences  over  them,  and  effective  in  win- 
ning the  confidence  of  a  multitude  of  par- 
ents who  would  never  send  their  daughters 
to  colleges  of  a  different  type. 

The  third  type  is  the  "  annex,"  a  recent 
and  interesting  experiment  in  the  education 
of  girls,  whose  future  it  is  yet  difficult  to 
predict.  Only  a  few  cases  exist,  and  as  the 


Harvard  Annex  is  the  most  conspicuous,  by 
reason  of  its  dozen  years  of  age  and  nearly 
two  hundred  students,  I  shall  describe  it  as 
the  typical  example.  In  the  Harvard  Annex 
groups  of  young  women  undertake  courses  of 
study  in  classes  whose  instruction  is  furnish- 
ed entirely  by  members  of  the  Harvard  Fac- 
ulty. No  college  officer  is  obliged  to  give  this 
instruction,  and  the  Annex  staff  of  teachers 
is,  therefore,  liable  to  considerable  variation 
from  year  to  year.  Though  the  usual  four 
classes  appear  in  its  curriculum,  the  large 
majority  of  its  students  devote  themselves 
to  special  subjects.  A  wealthy  girl  turns 
from  fashionable  society  to  pursue  a  single 
course  in  history  or  economics;  a  hard- 
worked  teacher  draws  inspiration  during  a 
few  afternoons  each  week  from  a  famous 
Greek  or  Latin  professor ;  a  woman  who  has 
been  long  familiar  with  French  literature 
explores  with  a  learned  specialist  some  sin- 
gle period  in  the  history  of  the  language. 
Because  the  opportunities  for  advanced  and 
detached  study  are  so  tempting,  many  ladies 
living  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Annex 
enter  one  or  more  of  its  courses.  There  are 
consequently  among  its  students  women 
much  older  than  the  average  of  those  who 
attend  the  colleges. 


124 


The  business  arrangements  are  taken 
charge  of  by  a  committee  of  ladies  and  gen- 
tlemen, who  provide  class -rooms,  suggest 
boarding-places,  secure  the  instructors,  so- 
licit the  interest  of  the  public — in  short, 
manage  all  the  details  of  an  independent 
institution  ;  for  the  noteworthy  feature  of 
its  relation  to  its  powerful  neighbor  is  this : 
that  the  two,  while  actively  friendly,  have 
no  official  or  organic  tie  whatever.  In  the 
same  city  young  men  and  young  women  of 
collegiate  rank  are  studying  the  same  sub- 
jects under  the  same  instructors;  but  there 
are  two  colleges,  not  one.  No  detail  in  the 
management  of  Harvard  College  is  changed 
by  the  presence  in  (Cambridge  of  the  Har- 
vard Annex.  If  the  corporation  of  Harvard 
should  assume  the  financial  responsibility, 
supervise  the  government,  and  give  the  girl- 
graduates  degrees,  making  no  other  changes 
whatever,  the  Annex  would  then  become  a 
school  of  the  university,  about  as  distinct 
from  Harvard  College  as  the  medical,  law,  or 
divinity  schools.  The  students  of  the  med- 
ical school  do  not  attend  the  same  lectures 
or  frequent  the  same  buildings  as  the  college 
undergraduates.  The  immediate  governing 
boards  of  college  and  medical  school  are 
separate..  But  here  comparison  fails,  for 


the  students  of  the  professional  schools  may 
elect  courses  in  the  college  and  make  use  of 
all  its  resources.  This  the  young  women 
cannot  do.  They  have  only  the  rights  of 
all  Cambridge  ladies  to  attend  the  many 
public  lectures  and  readings  of  the  Univer- 
sity. 

The  Harvard  Annex  is,  then,  to-day  a 
woman's  college,  with  no  degrees,  no  dor- 
mitories, no  women  instructors,  and  with  a 
staff  of  teachers  made  up  from  volunteers  of 
another  college.  The  Fay  House,  where 
offices,  lecture  and  waiting  rooms,  library 
and  laboratories  are  gathered,  is  in  the  heart 
of  old  Cambridge,  but  at  a  little  distance 
from  the  college  buildings.  This  is  the 
centre  of  the  social  and  literary  life  of  the 
students.  Here  they  gather  their  friends  at 
afternoon  teas ;  here  the  various  clubs  which 
have  sprung  up,  as  numbers  have  increased, 
hold  their  meetings  and  give  their  entertain- 
ments. The  students  lodge  in  all  parts  of 
Cambridge  and  the  neighboring  towns,  and 
are  directly  responsible  for  their  conduct 
only  to  themselves.  The  ladies  of  the  man- 
agement are  lavish  in  time  and  care  to  make 
the  girls' lives  happy  and  wholesome ;  the 
secretary  is  always  at  hand  to  give  advice ; 
but  the  personal  life  of  the  students  is  as 


separate  and  iu dependent  as  in  the  typical 
co-educational  college. 

It  is  impossible  to  estimate  either  favor- 
ably or  adversely  the  permanent  worth  of 
an  undertaking  still  in  its  infancy.  Man- 
ifestly, the  opportunities  for  the  very  highest 
training  are  here  superb,  if  they  happen  to 
exist  at  all.  In  this,  however,  is  the  incal- 
culable feature  of  the  system.  The  Annex 
lives  by  favor,  not  by  right,  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  predict  what  the  extent  of  favor 
may  at  any  time  be.  A  girl  hears  that  an 
admirable  course  of  lectures  has  been  given 
on  a  topic  in  which  she  is  greatly  interested. 
She  arranges  to  join  the  Annex  and  euter  the 
course,  but  learns  iu  the  summer  vacation 
that  through  pressure  of  other  work,  the  pro- 
fessor will  be  unable  to  teach  in  the  Annex 
the  folio wiug  year.  The  fact  that  favor 
rules,  and  not  rights,  peculiarly  hampers 
scientific  and  laboratory  courses,  and  for  its 
literary  work  obliges  the  Annex  largely  to 
depend  on  its  own  library.  Yet  when  all 
these  weaknesses  are  confessed — and  by  none 
are.  they  confessed  more  frankly  than  by  the 
wise  and  devoted  managers  of  the  Annex 
themselves — it  should  be  said  that  hitherto 
they  have  not  practically  hindered  the  forma- 
ation  of  a  spirit  of  scholarship,  eager,  free  aud 


sane  to  an  extraordinary  degree.  The  Annex 
girl  succeeds  in  remaining  a  private  and  un- 
observed gentlewoman,  while  still,  in  cer- 
tain directions,  pushing  her  studies  to  an 
advanced  point  seldom  reached  elsewhere. 

A  plan  in  some  respects  superficially  an- 
alogous to  the  American  annex  has  been  in 
operation  for  many  years  at  the  English, 
and  more  recently  at  some  of  the  Scotch 
universities,  where  a  hall  or  college  for 
women  uses  many  of  the  resources  of  the 
university.  But  this  plan  is  so  complicated 
with  the  peculiar  organization  of  English 
university  life  that  it  cannot  usefully  be 
discussed  here.  In  the  few  colleges  in  this 
country  where,  very  recently,  the  annex  ex- 
periment is  being  tried,  its  methods  vary 
markedly. 

Barnard  College  in  New  York  is  an  annex 
of  Columbia  only  in  a  sense,  for  not  all  her 
instruction  is  given  by  Columbia's  teaching 
force,  though  Columbia  will  confer  degrees 
upon  her  graduates.  The  new  woman's  col- 
lege at  Cleveland  sustains  temporarily  the 
same  relations  to  Adelbert  College,  though 
to  a  still  greater  extent  she  provides  inde- 
pendent instruction. 

In  both  Barnard  and  Cleveland  women 
are  engaged  in  instruction  and  in  govern- 


128 


meiit.  Indeed,  the  new  annexes  which  have 
arisen  in  the  last  three  years  seem  to  prom- 
ise independent  colleges  for  women  in  the 
immediate  neighborhood  of,  and  in  close 
relationship  with,  older  and  better  equipped 
universities  for  men,  whose  resources  they 
can,  to  some  extent,  use,  whose  standards 
they  can  apply,  whose  tests  they  can  meet. 
When  they  possess  a  fixed  staff  of  teachers 
they  are  not,  of  course,  liable  to  the  instabil- 
ities which  at  present  beset  the  Harvard 
Annex.  So  far,  however,  as  these  teachers 
belong  to  the  annex,  and  are  not  drawn  from 
the  neighboring  university,  the  annex  is  as- 
similated to  the  type  of  the  ordinary  woman's 
college,  and  loses  its  distinctive  merits.  If 
the  connection  between  it  and  the  university 
should  ever  become  so  close  that  it  had  the 
same  right  to  the  professors  as  the  university 
itself,  it  would  become  a  question  whether 
the  barriers  between  the  men's  and  the 
women's  lecture-rooms  could  be  economically 
maintained. 

The  preceding  survey  has  shown  how  in 
co-education  a  woman's  study  is  carried  on 
inside  a  men's  college,  in  the  women's  col- 
lege outside  it,  in  the  annex  beside  it. 
Each  of  these  situations  has  its  advantage. 
But  will  the  community  be  content  to  accept 


this ;  permanently  to  forego  tlie  counter 
advantages,  and  even  after  it  fully  realizes 
the  powers  and  limitations  of  the  different 
types,  firmly  to  maintain  them  in  their 
distinctive  vigor  ?  Present  indications  ren- 
der this  improbable.  Already  co-educational 
colleges  incline  to  more  careful  leadership 
for  their  girls.  The  separate  colleges,  with 
growing  wealth,  are  learning  to  value  in- 
trepidity, and  are  carrying  their  operations 
close  up  to  the  lands  of  the  Ph.D.  The 
annex  swings  in  its  middle  air,  sometimes 
inclining  to  the  one  side,  sometimes  to  the 
other.  And  outside  them  all,  the  great  body 
of  men's  colleges  continually  find  it  harder 
to  maintain  their  isolation,  and  extend  one 
privilege  after  another  to  the  seeking  sex. 

The  result  of  all  these  diversities  is  the 
most  instructive  body  of  experiment  that 
the  world  has  seen  for  determining  the  best 
ways  of  bringing  woman  to  her  powers. 
While  the  public  mind  is  so  uncertain,  so 
liable  to  panic,  and  so  doubtful  whether, 
after  all,  it  is  not  better  for  a  girl  to  be  a 
goose,  the  m^flHrathods  of  education  assist 
one  another^!  HR&*11  ^ne^r  united  warfare 
against  ignoi^l  J selfish  privileges,  and  an- 
tiquated ideals^Trcis  well  that  for  a  good 
while  to  come  woman's  higher  education 
9 


130 


should  be  all  tilings  to  all  mothers,  if  by  any 
means  it  may  save  girls.  Those  who  are 
hardy  enough  may  continue  to  mingle  their 
girls  with  men ;  while  a  parent  who  would 
be  shocked  that  her  daughter  should  do 
anything  so  ambiguous  as  to  enter  a  men's 
college  may  be  persuaded  to  send  her  to  a 
girls*.  Those  who  find  it  easier  to  honor  an 
old  university  than  the  eager  life  of  a  young 
college,  may  be  tempted  into  an  annex. 
The  important  thing  is  that  the  adherents 
of  these  differing  types  should  not  fall  into 
jealousy,  and  belittle  the  value  of  those  who 
are  performing  a  work  which  they  them- 
selves cannot  do  so  well.  To  understand 
one  another  kindly  is  the  business  of  the 
hour  —  to  understand  and  to  wait.  — The 


BOXFORD,  MASS,  1889. 


THE   TEACHING  OF  HISTORY 
IN    ACADEMIES    AND    COLLEGES.* 

BY  PROFESSOR  LUCY  M.  SALMON, 
.  VASSAR  COLLEGE. 

THE  old  Greek  legend  representing  the 
muse  of  history  as  of  divine  lineage,  and  the 
eldest  of  her  sisters,  rested  on  a  philosophic 
as  well  as  a  poetic  basis.  With  dim  per- 
cepti<^ns  of  the  nature  of  a  future  life,  men 
early  sought  it  in  the  record  of  their  earthly 
deeds,  hoping  thus  to  win  immortality  in 
spite  of  death. 

History  thus  ministered  to  the  individual, 
and  in  the  dim  twilight  of  the  race  sang  the 
wrath  of  Peleus's  son  and  the  fortunes  of  the 
exiled  men  of  Troy.  As  the  importance  of 
the  individual  became  merged  in  that  of  the 
nation,  it  was  the  jealousies  of  rival  States 
and  foreign  conquests  that  employed  her 
pen.  Nations,  like  individuals,  were  of  spe- 
cial interest  to  themselves,  and  their  achieve- 

*  Copyright,  1890,  by  George  A.  Bacon. 


132 


ments  in  war  and  politics  were  recorded  by 
admiring  and  servile  chroniclers.  Men  saw 
in  history  only  an  attempt  to  rescue  from 
oblivion  national  and  individual  deeds  wor- 
thy of  emulation  or  demanding  universal 
condemnation.  Until  our  own  period,  there- 
fore, the  muse  of  history  has,  with  few  ex- 
ceptions, been  an  annalist  looking  from  a 
lower  window.  Men  and  events  have  passed 
before  her,  but  she  has  not  cared  whence 
they  came  or  whither  they  went.  But  as 
modern  chemistry  is  the  outgrowth  of  mediae- 
val alchemy,  and  astronomy  of  the  astrology 
of  a  still  more  aucieut  day,  so  modern  his- 
tory has  been  developed  from  these  chroni- 
cles of  a  remote  past.  Clio  no  longer  seeks 
alone  to  win  enduring  fame  for  her  favored 
heroes,  but  she  depicts  the  past,  that  men 
may  live  more  wisely  in  the  present.  As 
the  muse  of  comparative  histor}7,  she  goes  to 
the  mountain-top  and  makes  the  whole  world 
hers  by  right  of  eminent  domain. 

Several  influences  have  contributed  to 
bring  about  this  change,  but  the  most  im- 
portant have  come  through  the  French  Revo- 
lution. Those  great  intellectual  movements 
that  culminated  in  the  overthrow  of  abso- 
lutism in  France  and  the  creation  of  new 
political  ideals  throughout  Western  Europe 


gave  to  history  a  different  conception  of  the 
relative  position  of  potentates  and  peoples. 
The  subject  gained  new  dignity  as  it  aban- 
doned the  homage  previously  paid  to  civil, 
military,  and  ecclesiastical  rulers,  and  con- 
cerned itself  more  with  the  characteristics 
of  nations.  Voltaire  anticipated  Macaulay 
and  Green  by  one  hundred  years  when  he 
wrote,  "  I  wish  to  write  a  history,  not  of 
wars,  but  of  society.  ...  I  want  to  know 
what  were  the  steps  by  which  men  passed 
from  barbarism  to  civilization. "  History 
has  thus  during  the  present  century  gained 
a  new  theme  in  the  portrayal  of  those  demo- 
cratic tendencies  of  which  its  new  purpose 
has  been  the  result. 

But  not  only  did  the  French  Revolution 
create  a  truer  historical  perspective  within 
the  different  nations — it  also  widened  the 
horizon  of  each.  The  armies  of  Napoleon 
and  the  allies,  that  swept  over  Europe  from 
the  Spanish  peninsula  to  the  heart  of  Russia, 
broke  down  the  artificial  barriers  that  had 
separated  nation  from  nation.  Provincialism 
was  diminished,  national  interest  was  less 
self-centred,  States  for  the  first  time  be- 
came aware  of  the  existence  of  institutions 
after  which  their  own  might  profitably  be 
modelled.  The  political,  social,  industrial, 


134 


and  educational  condition  of  nations  be- 
came of  more  vital  interest  than  the  hours 
of  dining  and  retiring  of  capricious  sov- 
ereigns. The  study  of  comparative  history 
was  born  of  the  same  destructive  forces  that 
overthrew  the  oldest  and  apparently  most 
stable  institutions  of  Europe. 

While  history  has  thus  been  indebted  to 
political  revolutions  for  new  themes,  it  has 
also  been  indebted  to  changing  intellectual 
standards  for  new  methods  of  work.  The 
early  age  had  been  one  of  credulity  and 
adulation.  But  men  came  in  time  to  see  that 
"fables  begin  to  be  current  in  one  genera- 
tion, are  established  in  the  second,  become 
respectable  in  the  third,  while  in  the  fourth 
temples  are  raised  in  their  honor."  Scepti- 
cism and  speculative  thought  followed  in 
turn,  and  these  have  been  superseded  by  a 
demand  for  the  study  of  facts,  not  for  their 
own  sake,  but  to  determine  the  laws  that 
govern  them.  Science  and  scientific  methods 
have  become  controlling  intellectual  forces, 
and  history,  like  every  other  subject,  has 
come  under  this  influence.  As  a  result  of 
this  awakening,  Voltaire  in  France,  Niebuhr 
in  Germany,  and  Arnold  in  England,  gave 
the  impulse  to  that  form  of  historical  writ- 
ing which  has  made  history  pre-eminent  in 


the  world  of  letters  in  our  own  century.  It 
has  not  been  forgotten  that  there  were  im- 
mortal names  in  Greece  and  Rome,  and  that 
the  eighteenth  century  produced  a  Gibbon  ; 
but  these  are  exceptions  that  show  that  the 
true  historical  spirit  characterized  the  in- 
dividual, not  the  age. 

If  history  has  thus  been  affected  by  the 
credulity  of  one  period  and  the  indiscrimi- 
uating  love  of  facts  of  another,  now  by 
speculative  tendencies  and  again  by  scien- 
tific movements,  is  it  not  a  chameleon  un- 
worthy of  consideration  among  more  stable 
subjects?  The  important  place  it  has  won 
for  itself  in  the  curricula  of  all  our  colleges 
and  secondary  schools  must  at  this  time  be 
a  sufficient  answer  to  the  question  ;  but  it  is 
fitting  to  ask  what  are  the  dangers  that  at 
present  beset  the  path  of  students  and  teach- 
ers of  history. 

The  first  danger  is  the  failure  to  recognize 
the  individuality  of  history.  This  is  often 
due  to  a  desire  to  acknowledge  the  indebted- 
ness of  history  to  science.  Schools  announce 
the  employment  in  history  of  "  laboratory 
methods,"  publishers  advertise  text -books 
in  history  constructed  on  the  laboratory 
plan,  and  a  recent  catalogue  of  a  large  and 
important  university  proclaims  that  no  text- 


136 


book  in  history  is  used,  but  that  one  is  being 
prepared  by  the  professor  and  advanced  stu- 
dents in  the  historical  laboratory  of  the 
university.  Historical  laboratory,  indeed  ! 
Is  the  old  word  library  to  become  obsolete 
and  referred  in  the  next  edition  of  Webster 
to  the  heading  laboratory  f  Must  our  study- 
table  give  place  to  a  more  scientific  article 
of  furniture  yet  to  be  produced  in  some  other 
historico-scieutific  workshop  ?  The  true  stu- 
dent and  teacher  of  history  is  ever  foremost 
to  confess  his  obligation  to  scientific  methods, 
but  he  will  never  recognize  in  history  a  sub- 
division of  physics  or  biology,  or  look  for- 
ward to  an  historical  Newton  who  will  re- 
duce the  events  of  the  past  to  mathematical 
formulas  or  physical  laws. 

A  second  phase  of  the  same  danger  as- 
sumes the  form  of  a  desire  to  make  history 
the  vehicle  for  our  philosophical  conceptions 
of  the  past,  present,  and  future.  This  desire 
to  know  and  to  teach  the  philosophy  of  his- 
tory is  a  reaction  against  that  spirit  which 
saw  in  the  events  of  the  past  only  an  enu- 
meration of  facts,  a  skeleton  without  flesh 
and  blood.  This  reaction  has  been  inevita- 
ble, and  in  a  sense  is  not  to  be  regretted;  but 
it  has  brought  its  own  attending  dangers. 
A  class  of  teachers,  by  no  means  small  in 


numbers  or  restricted  in  influence,  Avhose 
knowledge  of  history  and  of  philosophy  is 
based  on  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  History,  sup- 
plemented by  a  course  of  lectures  at  the 
Concord  School,  is  to-day  instructing  history 
classes  in  our  high-schools  that  the  ultimate 
aim  of  the  world  is  the  mind's  consciousness 
of  its  rational  freedom.  For  the  type  of 
mind  that  has  first  grasped  the  idea  that  it 
is  not  all  of  history  to  teach  Barnes's  text- 
books memoriter  from  cover  to  cover,  the 
transition  is  easy  to  the  Hegelian  conception 
that  in  Greece  the  mind  was  introspective ; 
among  the  Romans  the  mind  was  resolved 
into  generality,  which  makes  mind  itself 
universal ;  while  in  Christianity  the  mind 
first  withdraws  into  pure  introspection  in 
communion  with  the  universal ;  then  fol- 
lows the  reconciliation,  which  is  the  in- 
trospective mind  transforming  the  world. 
(Diesterweg's  summary.)  A  disciple  of  this 
school,  whose  sublime  indifference  to  the 
fact  that  the  Norman  Conquest  came  in  the 
eleventh  rather  than  in  the  first  or  the  nine- 
teenth century,  had  been  the  despair  of  his 
instructor,  when  asked  what  material  he 
would  select  for  a  class  in  history  in  the 
grammar  grades,  replied  promptly,  "  I  would 
teach  them  the  philosophy  of  history."  It 


138 


is  this  spirit  that  teaches  in  our  acad- 
emies and  high  -  schools  the  philosophical, 
psychological  and  physiological  aspects 
of  the  French  Revolution,  that  discusses 
history,  as  has  been  said  of  Mr.  Carlyle's 
Frederick  the  Great,  "  in  the  past  potential 
subjunctive,"  and  all  this  without  any 
sound,  accurate  knowledge  of  the  facts  on 
which  the  conclusions  of  others  have  been 
based. 

A  third  danger  conies  in  the  adaptation 
of  the  fatalistic  "  whatever  is,  is  right,"  into 
the  fashionable  "  whatever  is  European,  is 
right."  This,  again,  is  but  the  expression  of 
a  reaction  against  a  too  fervid  patriotism 
which  would  have  nothing  of  the  effete 
monarchies  of  the  Old  World ;  but  special 
evils  follow  in  its  train.  The  college  that 
employs  laboratory  methods  and  teaches  the 
philosophy  of  history  to  freshmen  glories  in 
"original  investigation "  and  the  German 
seminary.  He  is  of  all  men  most  deceived 
who  dreams  that  the  German  Seminarium 
can  be  built  upon  anything  but  a  German 
university  basis.  Doubtless  the  word  semi- 
nary is  often  used  with  us  to  characterize  a 
form  of  instruction  affording  special  freedom 
of  intercourse  bet  ween  professor  and  student, 
and  in  this  sense  its  use  is  not  objectionable, 


139 


but  the  typical  German  seminary  in  an 
American  college  is  an  anomaly. 

A  fourth  danger  comes  from  another  adap- 
tation of  the  old  saying  into  "whatever  is 
new,  is  right."  This,  again,  is  a  reaction 
against  certain  misconceptions  of  the  subject- 
matter  of  history.  Since  Mr.  Green  wrote 
his  Short  History  of  the  English  People,  in 
protest  against  the  previous  exclusive  con- 
sideration of  military  and  political  aifairs,  it 
lias  become  the  fashion  to  decry  every  his- 
tory that  does  not  treat  of "  the  people." 
The  protest  has  been  well  made ;  but  there 
is  danger  that  the  teacher  who  welcomes 
emancipation  from  the  drudgery  that  com- 
pelled the  memorization  of  all  the  campaigns 
of  the  Revolutionary  War  will  forget  that 

"  civlyzation  doos  git  forrid 
Sometimes  upon  a  powder  cart." 

There  is  a  temptation  to  overlook  the  fact 
that  we  are  conscious  of  our  political  con- 
stitution, as  of  our  physical  body,  only  when 
it  is  out  of  order,  and  that  the  study  of  pre- 
ventive politics,  like  preventive  medicine, 
has  a  proper  place.  The  fault  of  all  early 
writers  and  teachers  of  history  was  not  in 
the  consideration,  but  in  the  exclusive  con- 


140 


sideration  of  military  and  political  affairs. 
He  errs  in  like  degree  who  teaches  that  these 
phases  of  a  nation's  life  can  be  ignored.  He 
is  wise  who  sees  them  in  their  proper  rela- 
tion to  other  phenomena  of  society. 

These  four  dangers,  the  loss  of  the  in- 
dividuality of  history  in,  first,  the  scientific 
tendencies,  and,  second,  the  philosophical  as- 
pirations of  the  times,  the  attempted  trans- 
planting of  foreign  methods  to  American 
soil,  and  the  recent  ignoring  of  certain  vital 
portions  of  history,  all  grow  out  of  the  prone- 
ness  in  the  human  mind  to  seize  half  of  a 
truth  and  remain  content  with  it.  We  have 
learned  in  medicine,  but,  alas !  not  yet  in 
pedagogy,  the  fallacy  of  the  argument  that 
if  a  little  of  a  thing  is  good,  more  must  be 
better.  Each  of  these  methods  of  teaching 
history  is  half  right,  but  wholly  wrong.  A 
scientific  method  in  its  study  we  must  have ; 
but  to  treat  history  as  an  exact  science  is 
to  degrade  it  from  its  own  exalted  position, 
since  all  imitation  is  demeaning.  The  rela- 
tion of  cause  and  effect  every  beginner  in 
history  must  be  able  to  see  ;  but  to  introduce 
Hegel,  Schlegel,  or  Lotze  into  the  class-room 
of  the  average  academy  or  college  is  to 
caricature  both  history  and  philosophy.  The 
German  seminary  is  good — in  Germany;  and 


lil 


the  adaptation  of  many  of  its  methods  may 
be  good  for  us,  in  so  far  as  it  teaches  us  to 
subordinate  rhetoric  to  fact  and  to  consult 
original  documents.  The  history  of  peoples 
we  must  have,  but  of  peoples  concerned  in 
war  and  politics  as  well  as  in  literature  and 
industries. 

If  we  are  to  avoid  these  and  similar  dan- 
gers, we  must  clearly  understand,  first,  the 
general  principles  that  should  control  all 
teaching  of  history,  and,  second,  the  line  of 
demarcation  between  history  as  taught  in 
the  secondary  school,  in  the  normal  school, 
and  in  the  college  and  university. 

History,  wherever  taught,  should  ever 
keep  in  mind,  as  regards  the  choice  of 
subject-matter,  the  practical  end.  Perhaps 
we  come  late  in  life  to  realize  that  history, 
like  virtue,  is  its  own  reward,  as  we  learn  to 
appreciate  Mr.  Lowell's  definition  of  a  uni- 
versity as  a  place  where  nothing  useful  can 
be  learned.  But  the  practical  end  must 
come  first  and  lead  up  to  it.  This  end  must 
be  the  creation  of  an  intelligent  understand- 
iu'g  of  American  history,  American  institu- 
tions, American  ideals.  This  does  not  im- 
ply that  we  are  to  teach  American  history 
exclusively — far  from  it;  but  our  national 
history  is  to  be  at  once  the  beginning  and 


the  climax  of  all  historical  study.  The 
necessity  for  this  is  the  greater  since  we 
have  but  recently  come  to  recoguize  the 
importance  of  historical  study.  Not  until 
the  Civil  War  had  made  possible  a  true  na- 
tional life  did  we  dare  to  bid  defiance  to 
sectional  and  local  jealousies  and  study  our 
own  past.  On  the  other  hand,  the  study  of 
European  institutions  was  neglected,  for  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  took  root  educationally  as 
well  as  politically.  When  the  centennial 
anniversary  of  our  independence  lessened 
our  prejudices  and  removed  somewhat  our 
insular  character,  a  new  interest  came  in 
the  study  of  European  history  and  politics. 
We  have  thus  come  to  realize  that  both 
American  and  European  history  must  be 
taught,  in  view  of  the  large  number  of  for- 
eigners annually  coming  to  our  shores,  the 
early  age  at  which  many  American  boys  and 
girls  leave  school,  and  the  grave  political 
problems  yet  unsettled  and  demanding  the 
serious  attention  of  every  mature  mind. 
Bishop  Potter,  in  his  recent  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
address  on  "  The  Scholar  and  the  State," 
has  shown  the  necessity  of  keeping  ever 
present,  even  in  the  higher  paths  of  learning, 
the  plain  truths  that  history  teaches,  if  we 
are  not  to  be  wrecked  on  the  shoals  where 


143 


other  nations  have  gone  down .  From  strange 
localities  the  encouragement  comes  to  begin 
and  to  continue  this  work.  On  Rivington 
Street,  in  the  slums  of  New  York,  in  a  dis- 
trict from  which  comes  one -tenth  of  the 
criminals  of  New  York  City,  a  college  settle- 
ment has  been  established,  and  in  connection 
with  it  a  free  library.  The  librarian  reports 
that  the  first  demand  of  every  boy  is  for  a 
life  of  George  Washington,  and  that  when 
the  biographies  have  been  exhausted,  the 
second  choice  is  for  a  history  that  has  "  some- 
thing about  George  Washington."  If  a  re- 
cent magazine  article  on  "  Why  an  Irish  boy 
should  make  a  good  American  citizen  "  could 
teach,  not  only  our  friends  from  the  Emerald 
Isle,  but  immigrants  from  other  nations  as 
well,  their  duties  as  citizens  of  the  Republic, 
and  if  Bishop  Potter's  address  could  be  placed 
in  the  hands  of  every  native  American,  the 
teaching  of  history  would  receive  greater 
encouragement  than  has  yet  been  vouch- 
safed to  it. 

If  the  practical  end  should  be  our  objective 
point,  three  general  principles  should  lead  us 
to  it. 

The  first  step  in  beginning  any  historical 
work  is  to  give  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the 
whole  subject.  What  Bunker  Hill  Monu- 


rnent  is  to  Boston,  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  to 
New  York,  and  the  Eiffel  Tower  to  Paris,  that 
the  general  outline  is  in  all  historical  study. 
One  school  of  writers  has  often  of  late  urged 
the  theory  that  historical  study  should  be- 
gin with  local  history,  that  the* town  and 
county  should  come  first,  the  nation  last. 
But  this  is  much  like  attempting  to  draw 
a  map  of  the  United  States  by  locating 
New  York  City,  Chicago,  San  Francisco,  and 
Key  West,  and  then  drawing  the  coast-lines. 
It  is  the  historical  Cuvier,  not  the  novice, 
who  can  take  an  isolated  portion  of  local 
history  and  reconstruct  from  it  an  historical 
whole. 

A  second  general  principle  is  that  in  his- 
tory, as  well  as  in  pure  and  applied  science, 
the  student  must  become  familiar  with  the 
terminology  employed.  The  words  state, 
constitution,  law,  pure  democracy,  representa- 
tive government  must  be  as  clearly  under- 
stood as  straight  line  and  angle,  base  and 
salt.  In  this  way  much  local  history  and 
many  political  principles  can  be,  indeed  must 
be,  taught  by  way  of  illustration.  "  Taxa- 
tion without  representation  "  is  a  glittering 
generality ;  but  it  has  meaning  when  the 
principles  of  taxation  are  understood,  and 
when  it  is  evident  why  we  never  pay  a  di- 


vect  tax  without  complaining,  and  why  some 
persons  can  look  with  equanimity  upon  the 
payment — by  others — of  an  indirect  tax  of 
20  per  cent,  on  foreign  books. 

A  third  general  aim  should  be  to  train  the 
student  to  do  independent  work.  This  can 
be  done  by  putting  into  the  hands  of  the 
students,  even  of  high-school  boys  and  girls, 
a  certain  amount  of  original  material.  The 
amount  as  well  as  the  kind  must  vary  with 
the  nature  of  the  school  and  the  time  given 
to  the  subject ;  but  to  pupils  of  even  the 
lowest  grade  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  must  be  something  more  than  "  what 
is  in  the  back  part  of  the  book ;"  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence  must  teach  him  why 
the  colonies  revolted,  and  his  Iliad  must 
show  him  the  condition  of  society  in  the 
Homeric  age.  The  best  working  outfit  for 
every  grade  is  a  text -book  containing  a 
brief  outline  of  facts,  supplemented  by  origi- 
nal documents,  selected  with  reference  to 
the  needs  of  special  classes.  Publishers  are 
ever  ready  to  meet  such  demands,  and  have 
already  given  us  the  Old  South  Leaflets,  The 
National  Library,  English  History  from  Con- 
temporaneous Writers,  and  Documents  Illus- 
trating American  History,  wh/le  the  instruc- 
tor can  find  compensation  for  oue  of  his  trials 
10 


iii  the  large  number  of  old  English  chronicles 
made  available  in  the  Bohn  edition.  Some 
persons  indeed  have  cried  out  in  alarm 
against  the  free  use  of  original  documents, 
even  in  our  colleges,  as  an  introduction  of 
"  university  methods."  Such  criticism,  how- 
ever, is  due  to  a  failure  to  understand  what 
is  meant  by  university  methods,  and  to  a 
lack  of  discrimination  between  independent 
work,  which  should  be  done  everywhere, 
and  original  work,  which  properly  belongs 
to  the  university. 

These  general  principles  we  believe  should 
govern  all  historical  teaching;  but  there  are 
certain  specific  principles  that  nmst  be  ap- 
plied to  the  teaching  of  history  in  special 
grades.  We  may  lay  down  the  general 
proposition  that  in  the  secondary  schools 
the  distinctive  aim  should  be  the  accumula- 
tion of  historical  knowledge,  in  the  normal 
school  the  classification  of  such  knowledge, 
in  the  college  independent  investigation, 
and  in  the  university  original  investigation. 
This  expresses,  however,  only  the  leading 
characteristic  in  each  form  of  instruction, 
since  in  every  grade  must  be  found  to  a 
certain  extent  the  distinguishing  features 
of  every  other  grade. 

It  has  been   said  that  in  the  secondary 


schools  the  distinctive  aim  should  be  the 
accumulation  of  historical  knowledge.  A 
German  university  professor  was  once  asked 
the  first  step  in  historical  study.  His  brief 
reply  was  " Lesen."  "And  the  second?" 
"Viel  lesen."  "And  the  third?"  "  Sehr 
I'icl  lesen."  The  principle  applies  to  work 
in  the  secondary  schools.  But  here  the  in- 
structor must  be  like  the  skilful  engineer 
who  constructs  a  tunnel  by  beginning  at 
opposite  sides  of  the  mountain,  knowing  that 
the  two  ends  of  the  tunnel  will  ultimately 
meet  without  the  variation  of  a  hair's 
breadth.  At  one  end  of  the  historical  tunnel 
must  be  the  reading,  the  much  reading,  the 
very  much  reading;  at  the  other  end,  care- 
ful, systematic,  dry — if  you  please — tedious 
drill.  There  must  be  the  much  reading,  or 
the  student  early  forms  the  pernicious  habit 
of  generalizing  from  one  particular.  There 
must  be  careful  guidance  to  furnish  a  recep- 
tacle for  this  knowledge,  or  it  is  like  water 
poured  upon  the  ground.  There  must  be 
general  information,  or  the  student  becomes 
narrow ;  but  general  information  alone  is  a 
jelly-fish,  brilliant  in  coloring,  but  formless 
and  without  use.  In  the  secondary  schools 
everything  is  grist  that  comes  to  the  histori- 
cal mill,  but  it  is  here  also  that  the  student 


148 


must  learn  that  "  there  is  no  northwest  pas- 
sage to  the  intellectual  world." 

The  special  province  of  the  normal  school 
is  to  emphasize  the  classification  of  histori- 
cal knowledge.  To  the  average  normal- 
school  student  a  fact  is  a  fact.  His  knowl- 
edge is  a  Chinese  painting,  an  historical 
crazy-quilt.  He  never  sees  that  in  history, 
as  well  as  in  mathematics,  2  -\-2  —  4.  He  has 
often  much  general  information,  especially 
concerning  his  own  country,  but  it  is  an  in- 
formation and  a  zeal  for  information  that 
leads  him  to  ask  "  How  many  Presidents 
have  died  in  office?"  "  Who  was  President 
for  a  single  day  ?"  "  Who  fired  the  first  gun 
in  the  Civil  War?"  "Who  was  the  young- 
est soldier  iu  the  Revolution  ?"  and  to  affirm, 
in  the  same  breath,  "  the  reconciliation  of 
the  contradiction  between  its  inner  aim  and 
life  with  its  actual  being  is  the  process  of 
the  history  of  a  nation.  The  collision  be- 
tween the  ideal  of  a  nation  and  the  actual 
produces  the  process  of  history."  The  nor- 
mal-school student  must  first  of  all  be  taught 
historical  perspective,  and,  second,  that  there 
is  no  historical  multiplication-table  or  sys- 
tem of  mechanical  memorizing  either  of  de- 
tails or  of  general  principles  that  can  be  ap- 
plied to  the  solution  of  historical  problems. 


149 


If  the  secondary  school  is  to  encourage  the 
accumulation  of  historical  knowledge,  and 
the  normal  school  the  classification  of  histor- 
ical facts,  it  is  the  college  and  the  university 
that  is  to  be  the  investigator  of  historical 
subjects.  It  is  said  that  every  lawyer  owes 
a  debt  of  gratitude  to  his  profession.  So  the 
obligation  rests  upon  every  special  teacher 
and  student  of  history  to  contribute  some- 
thing to  the  sum  of  historical  knowledge. 
This  contribution  cannot  be  made  during  a 
college  course,  but  the  college  student  must 
be  an  investigator  for  himself,  the  tools  must 
be  put  into  his  hands,  and  he  must  learn 
their  use.  Like  the  high  -  school  boy,  ho 
must  be  an  omnivorous  reader,  but  he  must 
also  be  a  critical  reader.  Hume  and  Free- 
man are  to  be  to  him  not  merely  names  of 
historians,  but  of  historians  representing  dif- 
ferent schools  of  thought.  Macaulay's  every 
school-boy  knows  that  taxation  without  rep- 
resentation was  the  cause  of  the  Revolution, 
but  the  college  student  must  know,  if  the 
school -boy  does  not,  why  but  one  of  the 
twenty-seven  complaints  in  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  refers  to  the  subject  of 
taxation.  The  college  student  must  know 
that  Magna  Charta  is  the  corner-stone  of 
English  liberty,  not  because  Bishop  Stubbs 


150 


and  all  the  historians  say  so,  but  because  ho 
has  himself  studied  that  great  instrument 
and  the  subsequent  development  of  consti- 
tutional liberty.  The  college  student  must 
learn  the  condition  of  the  Church  before  the 
Reformation,  not  from  Fisher,  Hausser,  and 
Alzog,  but  from  Chaucer,  Dante,  Sir  Thomas 
More,  and  Erasmus.  He  must  know  that 
history  is  not  a  simple  substance,  but  a  com- 
pound. He  must  be  able  to  see  that  into  it 
enter,  as  component  parts,  politics,  economics, 
statistics,  finance,  sociology,  jurisprudence, 
archeology,  philanthropy,  comparative  phi- 
lology— every  subject  that  concerns  itself 
with  the  life  of  the  individual  or  the  nation. 
He  must  be  familiar  not  only  with  the 
process  of  analysis,  but  also  with  that  of 
composition. 

What  results  are  we  justified  in  thinking 
should  follow  our  best  efforts  in  secondary 
school  and  college  ? 

In  the  first  place,  history  can  do  more 
than  any  other  subject  except  science  to 
break  down  the  barrier  that  too  often  rises 
between  the  instructor's  desk  and  the  class- 
room seats.  No  subject  except  science  lends 
itself  so  readily  to  co-operative  methods  of 
work.  Professor  and  student,  teacher  and 
pupil  are  alike  seekers  after  truth,  and  the 


151 


library  door  swings  outward  for  all.  If,  as 
has  been  said,  aristocratic  politics  broke 
down  with  the  French  Revolution,  and  aris- 
tocratic economics  are  fast  disappearing  in. 
the  light  of  the  economic  discussions  of  the 
day,  so  aristocratic  pedagogics  must  yield 
to  that  spirit  which  makes  students  of  both 
instructor  and  instructed. 

Again,  history  is  pre-eminently  adapted 
to  teach  the  fact  that  knowledge  is  singular 
in  fact  as  well  as  in  form.  To  the  ordinary 
mind  Greek  is  Greek,  geology  is  geology, 
and  history  is  history.  Caesar's  "  first  im- 
pressions "of  Britain,  and  Cicero's  arraign- 
ment of  Verres,  which  must  have  exhausted 
all  the  editions  of  the  Roman  Herald  and 
Evening  Post,  are  to  the  average  school- 
boy not  history,  politics,  and  literature,  but 
Latin.  The  average  college  student  turns 
for  his  history,  not  to  his  Caesar,  but  to 
Mommsen's  chapter  on  the  lt  Subjugation  of 
the  West,"  which  in  its  narrative  portion  is 
but  a  paraphrase  of  the  Commentaries.  Noth- 
ing is  more  difficult  to  overcome  than  this  be- 
lief that  each  branch  of  knowlege  is  isolated. 
History,  more  than  any  other  subject  except 
literature,  must  show  how  every  study  in 
the  school  or  college  curriculum  dovetails 
into  every  other  study,  making  from  seem- 


ingly  isolated  parts  a  compact  whole.  His- 
tory must  show  that,  while  it  itself  works 
by  scientific  methods,  science  works  by  the 
historical  method ;  that  mathematics  and 
music  are  first  cousins ;  that  art  and  philoso- 
phy are  related ;  and  that  the  study  of  San- 
scrit roots  has  made  "  the  whole  world  akin." 
These  are  but  suggestions  of  what  history 
can  and  should  do.  History  does  not  wish 
to  supersede  any  or  all  other  subjects  in  the 
academic  or  the  college  curriculum.  It  asks 
only  a  fair  place  and  reasonable  treatment. 

1890. 


THE  PRIVATE  SCHOOL  FOR  GIRLS. 

BY  ANNA   C.  BRACKETT. 

THERE  is  no  science  of  education.  There 
are  many  theories,  and  there  is  an  art  of 
education.  Every  true  teacher  is  and  must 
be  an  artist,  working  on  the  most  plastic  of 
materials,  and  changing  her  methods  as  the 
state  of  the  material  gives  notice  to  her 
practised  mental  eye  that  change  is  needed. 
It  is  this  fact  which  makes  experience  of  so 
much  value  in  the  profession,  and  this  which 
makes  the  problem  of  normal  schools  so  dif- 
ficult. It  is  only  the  quickened  insight  of 
a  mind  originally  fit  for  the  work  which 
can  determine  the  mental  state  to  be  dealt 
with  at  the  moment,  and  can  then  select, 
out  of  all  the  means  at  command,  the  very 
question  or  the  very  explanation  that  will 
enable  the  child's  mirid  to  take  hold  of  the 
truth  to  be  conveyed.  The  maker  of  Da- 
mascus blades  cannot  tell  you  how  he  knows 
that  the  steel  has  had  exactly  the  required 
amount  of  heat.  He  sees  the  color  and  he 


154 


knows ;  that  is  all  there  is  of  it.  If  you  do 
not  see  it,  he  cannot  help  you,  any  more 
than  the  laundress  can  tell  you  how  hot  the 
iron  must  be  for  the  material  she  is  going 
to  put  it  on.  She  holds  it  to  her  face,  or 
touches  it  with  wet  finger,  and  decides. 
The  cook  puts  her  hand  into  the  oven  and 
says  that  we  must  wait  a  little  longer  be- 
fore setting  the  bread  in,  and  she  is  right. 
The  problem  of  real  teaching  is  of  this  or- 
der, only  more  complicated  because  of  the 
material ;  for  steel  and  cloth  and  dough  can 
be  depended  on  to  answer  a  certain  quanti- 
ty of  heat  with  a  certain  reaction,  while  the 
human  mind  has  left  to  it  freedom  in  its 
way  of  working,  and  no  two  human  minds 
are  alike.  There  are  no  unfailing  rules 
which  can  be  given  to  the  incipient  teacher, 
and  no  patent  methods  will  avail.  All  de- 
pends upon  the  circumstances  at  the  very 
time  when  she  has  to  act,  and  those  her  in- 
structors cannot  by  any  possibility  know. 
The  only  rule  without  exception  that  oc- 
curs to  me  is  that  she  should  never  punish 
when  she  is  angry ;  but  this  would  be  a 
very  slender  stock  to  go  into  business  with, 
and  the  imparting  of  it  would  hardly  justify 
a  legislature  in  building  normal  schools. 
The  truth  is  that  education,  having  no 


155 


principles  of  its  own,  must  use  those  fur- 
nished by  the  sciences,  especially  by  psy- 
chology. But  the  conclusions  and  the  gen- 
eralizations of  psychology,  so  far  as  it  is  an 
empirical  science,  are  drawn  from  observa- 
tions on  the  adult  mind,  and  therefore  are 
not  always  to  be  depended  on  in  our  deal- 
ings with  the  child  mind,  which  is,  as  Pro- 
fessor Royce  says,  "  possessed  by  an  inca- 
pacity of  a  relatively  diseased  sort ;"  and  he 
adds,  "  the  wise  teacher  is  a  sort  of  physi- 
cian who  is  to  help  the  child  towards  get- 
ting that  kind  of  health  which  we  call  ma- 
turity." He  says  wisely  that  the  mind  of 
the  child  is  a  "  chaos  of  unreason."  It  is 
the  part  of  the  teacher  to  create  from  this 
chaos  a  world  which  shall  no  longer  be 
without  form  and  void,  and  to  brood  over 
the  face  of  the  deep.  She  is  not  without 
assistance  from  within,  for  the  spirit  of  God 
moves  upon  the  face  of  the  waters  and  waits 
to  answer  to  her  call.  But  does  she  know 
how  to  call  ?  That  is  the  question,  the  an- 
swer to  which  determines  whether  she  be  a 
teacher  or  not.  The  problem  in  the  educa- 
tion of  every  child's  mind  is  like  the  prob- 
lem with  the  deaf-mute  Laura  Bridgman, 
only  that  we  have  with  common  children 
more  means  of  reading  it  than  Dr.  Howe 


had  of  reaching  hers,  and  so  of  putting  it 
into  communication  with  the  rest  of  the 
race.  He  says  that  the  first  efforts  at  her 
instruction  were  like  letting  down  lines  one 
after  another  into  the  bottom  of  the  deep 
sea  in  which  her  silent  soul  lay,  and  wait- 
ing the  moment  when  she  should  seize  hold 
of  them  and  be  drawn  up  into  the  light. 
In  teaching  we  are  continually  doing  this. 
We  let  down  our  lines  and  wait.  We  have 
more  lines  than  Dr.  Howe  had  with  her ; 
that  is  all  the  difference  ;  and  when  we  see 
the  light  flash  along  the  face,  we  know,  as 
he  did,  that  we  have  reached  the  intelli- 
gence we  were  feeling  for.  Perhaps  the 
best  training  any  ambitious  girl  could  have 
for  teaching  would  be  found,  not  in  a  nor- 
mal school,  but  for  one  year  in  an  asylum 
for  idiots,  one  year  at  Hampton,  and  one  in 
a  school  for  the  blind.  She  would  learn  in 
such  work  as  this  how  to  reach  the  intelli- 
gence which  lies  waiting.  The  greatest 
teachers,  as  a  rule,  have  not  been  those  who 
have  had  most  special  training  for  their 
profession.  They  have  been  the  broadest 
men  and  women  who  have  learned  of  the 
doctrine  by  doing  the  work,  and  who  have 
found  their  greatest  pleasure  and  reward  in 
the  doing  of  it. 


157 


When  it  is  distinctly  seen  that  education 
is  not  a  science,  but  an  art,  it  is  perceived 
why  so  many  so-called  normal  schools  fail 
of  their  purpose,  and  why  the  educational 
journals  which  appear  from  time  to  time, 
only  to  return  to  the  silence  from  which 
they  arose,  are  for  the  most  part  such  very 
useless  reading.  Of  course  the  education  of 
the  child  is  obtained  only  in  a  limited  sense 
in  school.  She  is  educated  in  general  by 
every  circumstance  of  her  life  from  the  time 
when  her  eyes  first  open  to  the  light.  But 
in  this  article  the  word  "  education  "  will 
be  understood  as  meaning  only  that  portion 
of  the  "conscious  direction  by  mature  per- 
sons of  the  growth  and  development  of  the 
young  "  which  takes  place  in  school.  The 
girl  gains  information  at  home  or  in  travel- 
ling, very  varied  information,  but  all  this 
comes  to  her  not  in  definite  order,  not  in 
definite  relation,  and  with  the  important 
and  the  unimportant  thrown  together  hap- 
hazard. She  cannot  be  said  to  be  educated 
unless  her  mind  has  been  worked  upon  in  a 
systematic  way,  the  proper  food  for  its  nat- 
ural growth  given  to  it  at  the  suitable  time, 
its  activity  rendered  orderly,  and  itself  sup- 
plied with  categories  under  which  it  can  ar- 
range any  information  afterwards  acquired. 


As  it  is  now,  the  so-called  education  of 
many  American  girls  has  produced  a  mere 
hodge-podge  of  bits  of  information,  of  no 
use  to  themselves,  and,  what  is  of  more  con- 
sequence, of  no  use  to  any  one  else.  She 
would  be  thought  a  strange  woman  who 
should  administer  medicine  to  her  children 
merely  because  it  happened  to  turn  up  in 
some  house  where  she  was  passing  the  sum- 
mer, or  because  it  had  been  left  over  in  her 
own  hands,  the  remnant  of  what  had  been 
years  ago  administered  to  herself.  Yet  this 
is  exactly  what  the  mother  does  who  ar- 
ranges lessons  in  German  for  her  children 
only  because  a  German  lady  happens  to  be 
spending  her  summer  in  the  same  hotel,  or 
who  insists  upon  a  teacher's  giving  her 
child  the  same  subjects,  in  the  same  way,  as 
those  used  by  her  own  teachers  when  she 
was  a  girl.  The  old  medicine  may  have 
been  -  good  in  the  old  time,  and  the  old 
physician  may  have  been  quite  right  in 
prescribing  it  for  a  headache,  but  it  does 
not  follow  therefore  tbat  we  are  to  keep  the 
bottle  on  the  table  and  give  it  whenever 
there  is  a  headache  in  the  family.  It  is 
only  the  skilled  physician  who  can  say 
whether  it  is  the  medicine  proper  at  anoth- 
er time  or  for  another  patient.  Many  peo- 


pie  seem  to  imagine  that  it  is  only  tbe 
number  of  beats  in  a  minute  that  the  phy- 
sician considers  when  he  feels  the  pulse.  If 
ifc  were  so,  the  science  and  art  of  medicine 
would  be  reduced  to  the  level  of  a  trade. 
What  tlie  physician  learns  from  the  pulse  is 
the  very  thing  which  his  experience  has  ren- 
dered him,  and  not  you,  capable  of  learning, 
and  the  thing  which  you  can  acquire  only 
as  he  did.  To  him  the  pulse  speaks,  and  he 
knows  what  its  quality  and  its  quantity 
mean.  Then  the  temperature  and  the  res- 
piration also  speak,  and  combining  all  the 
information  that  these  and  many  other 
signs  give  him,  he  prescribes  intelligently 
for  the  trouble  which  is  the  cause  of  all. 
This  is  medical  insight,  and,  as  Professor 
Royce  says,  "  The  teacher  who  can  make 
out  what  the  child's  actual  state  of  mind  is, 
has  developed  the  true  sort  of  psychological 
insight." 

To  develop  this  is  to  grow  into  a  teach- 
er. "The  habit  of  merely  judging  minds 
as  good  or  evil,  without  observing  what 
state  it  is,  what  mental  coloring,  what  in- 
ner live  process,  that  makes  them  good  or 
evil,"  is  the  habit  of  the  unprofessional 
mind ;  and,  as  Professor  Royce  goes  on  to 
say,  "  this  habit  is  so  ingrained  in  most  of 


160 


us  that  it  is  always  hard  to  learn  to  sub- 
stitute diagnosis  for  mere  estimation,  and  a 
loving  study  of  the  process  for  mere  exter- 
nal liking  or  disliking  of  the  person."  A 
teacher  might  he  defined  as  one  to  whom 
everything  that  children  do  or  say  has  he- 
come  a  sign.  She  thereby  loses  much  care- 
less amusement  which  other  people  find  in 
their  sayings  and  doings,  and  she  shrinks, 
with  a  protest  which  she  has  often  no  right 
to  express,  from  many  tin  account  of  the 
subjects  which  are  being  taught  to  them, 
or  the  ways  in  which  they  have  responded 
to  some  way  of  managing.  She  stands  in 
the  realm  of  realities,  not  in  that  of  phe- 
nomena, and  gains  thereby  much  more  pain 
than  pleasure  ;  for,  like  a  surgeon  contin- 
ually surrounded  by  children  with  badly 
set  or  deformed  limbs,  she  at  present  must 
live  in  the  company  of  minds  that  have,  as 
a  rule,  been  under  the  treatment  of  igno- 
rant and  unthinking  practitioners.  Hu- 
man vivisection  is  by  no  means  rare  in 
many  an  American  home,  where  most  of  the 
time  is  spent  in  exploiting  growing  chil- 
dren for  the  amusement  or  interest  of  the 
parents  or  visitors.  The  child  is  interest- 
ing to  its  parents,  and  many  a  question  is 
asked  of  it  "just  to  see  what  it  will  say." 


161 


Thus  many  a  subject  is  suggested  before 
the  mind  is  in  the  proper  state  for  its  re- 
ception, growth  according  to  the  divine 
plan  is  thwarted,  reflection  confused,  and 
what  should  have  been  a  pleasure  to  the 
child  becomes  a  pain. 

Too  much  stress  cannot  be  laid  upon  the 
necessity  of  harmony  between  the  state  of 
growth  of  the  girl's  mind  and  the  nature  of 
the  study  in  which  she  is  engaged.  Pro- 
fessor James  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that 
every  instinct  has  its  own  time  of  ripening. 
When  the  speech  instinct  has  ripened,  and 
not  before,  the  child  begins  to  talk.  Ear- 
lier, when  the  walking  instinct  has  come  to 
maturity  and  needed  expression,  he  begins 
to  try  to  walk.  When  the  flying  instinct 
is  ripe,  the  little  birds  quit  the  nest.  It 
makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
whether  the  girl  takes  up  a  subject  at  the 
time  when  her  mind  is  in  the  proper  state 
for  it,  and  those  mothers  who  will  not  al- 
low her  to  learn  to  read  till  she  is  seven 
years  old  are  wrong.  The  mind  has  by 
that  time  passed  the  stage  at  which  it  can 
do  without  disgust  the  work  necessary  to 
learn  the  perfectly  arbitrary  signs  that  ex- 
press language,  and  passively  protests 
against  the  unsuitable  labor.  Equally 
11 


162 


wrong  are  those  teachers  who  fancy  that  be- 
cause two  girls  of  widely  different  ages  know 
about  the  same  amount  of  French,  they 
may  be  put  into  the  same  French  class. 
The  method  of  teaching  must  diifer  entirely 
with  them,  even  though  they  should  have 
the  same  lesson  to  learn  from  the  same  text- 
book. This  fact  is  one  reason  why  it  is  de- 
sirable to  have  the  school  so  arranged  that 
one  teacher  shall  not  be  confined  to  one 
class,  but  shall  have  opportunity  to  act  on 
minds  of  different  ages.  This  tends  to  make 
better  teachers  through  the  varied  interest 
which  it  promotes,  and  the  wider  outlook 
which  it  presents  over  the  mind  at  different 
stages  of  growth,  and  we  cannot  have  a 
good  school  without  good  teachers,  no  mat- 
ter how  many  pupils  we  have.  We  must  in 
some  way  keep  our  teachers  fresh,  or  we 
lose  the  whole  game.  A  London  astrono- 
mer* remarks,  in  the  preface  to  his  recent 
book,  "  Virtually,  the  observer  himself  consti- 
tutes the  most  important  part  of  the  tele- 
scope ;  it  is  useless  having  a  glass  of  great 
capacity  at  one  end  of  a  tube  and  a  man  of 
small  capacity  at  the  other."  In  teaching, 


*  William  F.  Denning,  F.R.A.S.,  in    Telescopic   Work 
for  Starlight  Evenings. 


163 


the  teacher  is  the  observer ;  the  school,  if 
properly  organized,  is  the  tube ;  the  sub- 
jects taught,  the  glass ;  and  the  girl,  the 
heavenly  body  to  be  learned  about.  The 
analogy  is  as  perfect  as  any  analogy  can  be 
between  matter  and  spirit. 

The  true  teacher  does  not  need  to  be  told 
of  the  vivid  pleasure  which  shows  itself  on 
the  girl's  face  when  a  perception  of  rela- 
tions between  hitherto  disconnected  facts 
strikes  across  the  mind,  and  when  what  has 
been  so  far  troublesome  and  annoying 
chaos,  at  the  right  question  suddenly  slides 
into  order  and  conformity  to  law.  She  does 
not  need  to  be  told,  because  that  is  the  re- 
ward she  is  looking  for,  and  if  she  have  the 
power  of  the  teacher,  she  can  never  fail  of 
it.  Professor  James,  in  his  Psychology,  rec- 
ognizes the  great  pleasure  generated  by  a 
real  conviction  by  characterizing  conviction 
as  a  lofty  emotion.  To  be  able  to  create 
this  loffcy  pleasure,  and  to  repeat  the  proc- 
ess till  the  child  herself  seeks  for  it,  is  to 
be  a  teacher.  But  the  teacher's  function  is 
a  higher  one  than  that  of  simply  creating 
pleasure,  however  high  and  however  vivid  ; 
for  to  accomplish  anything  she  must  hold 
the  attention  of  the  pupil,  and  teach  her 
how  to  bring  back  wandering  attention ; 


aud  "the  faculty  of  voluntarily  bringing 
back  a  wandering  attention  over  and  over 
again  is  the  very  root  of  judgment,  charac- 
ter, and  will." 

It  is  just  here  that  the  school,  as  a  factor 
in  the  little  girl's  education,  differentiates 
itself  from  the  home,  which  should  have 
prepared  her  for  its  training.  Those  schools 
which  advertise  themselves  as  like  homes 
simply  proclaim  that  they  do  not  know 
what  the  function  of  either  is.  In  the  home 
the  child  is  a  part  of  a  whole,  held  together 
by  natural  relation  and  affection ;  in  the 
school  the  wholeness  is  constituted  by  hu- 
man law  acting  on  individuals  who  are  in 
a  great  degree  independent.  In  the  home, 
tenderness  and  pity  come  in  and  often  save 
the  offender  from  the  result  of  her  action ; 
in  the  school  they  can  never  do  so.  It  is  in 
the  school  first  that  she  feels  herself  a  re- 
sponsible member  of  a  community,  where 
each  one  has  the  same  rights  as  herself,  and 
where  the  other  members  do  not  belong  to 
her.  She  may  defend  the  members  of  her 
own  family,  even  though  they  do  wrong,  be- 
cause they  are  hers,  but  in  the  school  she 
first  learns  to  judge  action  in  and  for  itself 
as  right  or  wrong,  expedient  or  inexpe- 
dient, and  this  not  alone  for  her,  but  for  the 


165 


community  of  which  she  finds  herself  a 
component  part.  Then,  too,  the  affairs  of 
the  home  cannot  he  carried  on  with  that  re- 
gard for  ahsolute  punctuality  which  marks 
the  business  of  any  well  -  conducted  school ; 
to  try  to  do  so  would  destroy  the  comfort 
of  the  home,  for  its  members  would  feel  all 
the  time  as  if  about  to  start  on  a  railroad 
journey,  and  that  would  certainly  not  be  feel- 
ing at  home.  The  school  is  an  institution,  in 
its  every  minutest  detail  arranged  for  the 
conscious  direction  of  children,  while  the 
home  must  largely  include  in  its  purposes 
the  comfort  and  rest  of  the  adult  members. 
The  true  home  brings  up  the  child  as  a 
member  of  a  family,  a  natural  relation,  in- 
structing her  in  the  ways  of  civilized  society, 
teaching  her  obedience  and  respect  for  her 
elders,  reverence  for  authority,  human  and 
divine ;  the  school  receives  her  after  this 
has  been  done,  corrects  her  opinion  of  her- 
self and  her  own  people  by  putting  her  into 
relation  with  the  members  of  other  families, 
makes  of  her  a  responsible  member  of  a 
community,  holds  her  strictly  to  regularity 
and  punctuality,  gradually  leads  her  to  the 
thought  of  real  individual  responsibility  by 
making  her  bear  with  strict  impartiality 
the  legitimate  results  of  all  her  actions, 


166 


makes  a  steady  demand  upon  her  voluntary 
attention  for  periods  of  time  suited  to  her 
age,  gives  her  rest  at  proper  times,  but  de- 
mands of  her  always  that  work  shall  he 
work,  and  play,  play.  Here  she  learns  the 
difference  between  personal  and  impersonal 
authority,  for  the  teacher  during  school 
hours,  she  cannot  help  dimly  feeling,  is  not 
quite  the  same  person  that  she  is  when  she 
meets  her  elsewhere,  while  her  mother  is  al- 
ways her  mother.  Then,  intellectually,  she 
is  stimulated  by  the  company  of  others  of 
her  own  age  who  are  doing  the  same  things 
that  she  is  doing,  and  measuring  herself  by 
them,  she  gets  her  estimate  of  herself 
healthily  corrected.  Every  day  she  conies 
into  contact  with  older  girls,  the  members 
of  higher  classes  though  under  the  same 
discipline,  who  seem  to  her  very  wise,  and, 
if  the  school  be  a  successful  one,  very  good. 
This  opens  to  her  glimpses  of  fields  lying 
far  beyond  her  own  outlook,  to  the  full 
sight  of  which  she  hopes  by  patient  con- 
tinuance in  well -doing  to  attain.  As  she 
goes  on,  she  finds  other  children  in  classes 
below  her,  who  seem  to  her  very  small,  and 
who  are  puzzling  over  difficulties  which  she 
has  surmounted,  and  who,  if,  as  I  have  said 
before,  the  school  be  a  successful  one,  find 


167 


more  difficulty  in  self-control  than  she. 
Thus,  iu  the  daily  and  intertwined  life  of 
the  whole  school,  she  is  living  over  again 
her  past,  and  taking  glimpses  of  the  prom- 
ised laud  of  her  own  future, and  all  this,  of 
incalculable  value  to  her,  could  not  be  at- 
tained in  her  own  home. 

The  managing  a  school  so  that  it  may  be 
in  this  way  a  unit,  an  organic  unit — the  in- 
terweaving of  all  its  parts  by  the  teacher 
who  holds  it  all  in  her  consciousness — is 
one  of  the  most  important  things  which  she 
has  to  do.  In  comparison  with  this,  the 
selection  of  text  -  books  is  a  very  minor 
matter.  One  thing,  however,  is  essential, 
and  that  is,  that  in  this  her  assistants  shall 
work  intelligently  with  her.  They  must  be 
of  original  character  and  have  their  Own 
ways,  for  otherwise  they  would  not  be 
teachers  at  all,  but  they  must  be  plastic 
enough  to  be  moulded  into  some  degree  of 
conformity  with  the  thought  of  the  head 
teacher,  and  they  must  have  the  capacity 
for  growth  which  will  bring  them  finally  to 
seize  the  principles  underlying  the  whole 
fabric,  after  which  they  may  safely  be  left 
entirely  to  their  own  devices,  for  then  they 
will  work  in  harmony  with  the  school. 
Nothing  is  sadder  than  a  school  where  no 


168 


two  roads  meet,  where  the  girls  go  from  one 
teacher,  with  a  certain  set  of  requirements, 
to  another  who  makes  entirely  different  de- 
mands, till  all  rules  take  on  the  appearance 
of  arbitrariness  and  caprice,  and  nothing 
has  any  fixed  value.  No  lesson  could  he 
worse  than  this  for  a  girl,  who  is  by  nature 
— or  shall  I  say  by  all  her  education — in- 
clined to  look  upon  law  without  any  com- 
prehension of  its  tremendous  significance, 
and  to  regard  her  own  whims  and  fancies  as 
of  equal  value  with  law,  because  she  is  ac- 
customed to  see  them  so  often  yielded  to 
through  the  fondness  of  her  own  people. 
Especially  therefore  in  girls'  schools  should 
this  unity  be  insisted  on,  for  girls  stand  in 
need  of  it  much  more  than  boys.  The  lat- 
ter are  sure  to  get  levelling  enough  when 
they  come  into  contact  with  the  outside 
world,  but  the  girl  remains  a  sort  of  queen 
in  her  father's  house  till  she  becomes  queen 
in  that  of  her  husband,  and  she  is,  as  a 
rule,  sheltered  from  the  rude  contact  with 
the  demands  of  business  and  of  civil  law, 
which  is  the  only  thing  to  make  any  one 
realize  their  reality.  We  never  can  know 
that  a  thing  is  hard  and  pitiless  in  its  un- 
yielding till  we  strike  against  it.  Almost 
as  bad  is  the  school  that  puts  the  little  girl 


169 


in  a  class-room  and  keeps  her  for  a  whole 
year  under  the  exclusive  influence  of  one 
teacher.  The  child  needs  to  come  under 
differing  influences,  the  more  the  better,  if 
the  underlying  controlling  principle  be  the 
same.  The  school  must  be  composed  of 
classes  in  sufficient  number  to  cover  the 
whole  school  life  of  the  girl,  and  none  of 
these  classes  should  be  too  small ;  for  the 
class  must  be  used  as  a  means  of  influence 
on  each  individual  in  it,  both  intellectually 
and  morally.  The  differences  of  opinion 
among  its  different  members,  the  different 
experiences  of  the  little  gii'ls,  the  various 
points  of  view  assumed  as  a  result  of  these 
latter,  and,  above  all,  the  errors  that  are 
made,  afford  to  the  skilful  teacher  the  very 
best  material  with  which  to  influence  the 
young  mind.  Then  these  add  to  the  zest 
with  which  she  carries  on  the  work,  and 
therefore  to  her  power.  To  teach  a  class  is 
as  much  more  inspiring  than  to  teach  a 
single  pupil  as  to  play  first  violin  in  an 
orchestra  is  more  inspiring  than  to  perform 
on  the  jew's-harp.  To  manage  a  great 
school  of  the  kind  that  I  have  hinted  at  is 
to  conduct  the  orchestra. 

Herbart  says,  "  Instruction  must  be   car- 
ried out,  first,  with   energy,  in   order    that 


170 


interest  may  be  awakened;  second,  with 
breadth,  in  order  that  interest  may  be 
many-sided  ;  and,  lastly,  with  unity  of  pur- 
pose, in  order  that  intelligence  may  not  be 
distracted."  For  all  of  these  purposes  the 
influence  of  the  class  on  the  individual 
mind  may  be  said  to  be  imperatively  nec- 
essary. It  is  required  of  the  teacher,  and 
not  unreasonably,  since  she  must  be  an 
artist,  that  she  shall  continually  do  the  im- 
possible— that  is,  that  while  she  gives  her 
whole  attention  to  the  one  child  who  is  re- 
citing, she  shall  at  the  same  moment  be  ful- 
ly conscious  not  only  of  the  presence,  but 
also  of  the  state  of  mind,  of  every  other 
child  in  the  class.  She  must  always  work 
on  the  class,  not  on  the  individual  member, 
and  must  hold  with  a  strong  hand  the 
whole  of  it,  not  only  as  to  order,  but  also 
as  to  intellectual  activity,  under  the  power 
of  her  dominating  authority.  Authority  is 
a  stumbling-block  to  the  American,  and 
perhaps  to  all  those  who  live  in  our  time, 
but  all  the  more  is  it  needed.  It  is  quite 
impossible  to  teach,  iu  any  sense  of  the 
term,  a  mind  which  refuses  to  be  dominated 
to  a  certain  degree  by  the  teacher;  and  here 
comes  again  the  impossible  into  the  teach- 
er's experience,  for  while  she  dominates,  she 


171 


must  also  leave  free.  That  the  impossible 
is  done,  however,  can  never  be  doubted  by 
any  one  who  has  watched  the  work  of  a 
recitation  in  skilful  hands,  and  has  had 
enough  insight  to  feel  the  delicate  recipro- 
cal play  which  goes  on  all  through  it  be- 
tween teacher  and  class.  Indeed  there 
must  always  be  "  a  function  of  authority 
which  exceeds  any  given  stage  of  the  dis- 
ciple's experience."  So  the  teacher  must  al- 
ways be  in  two  places  at  once — her  own  men- 
tal place  and  that  of  her  little  pupil ;  this 
demands  the  greatest  sensitiveness  of  nature 
on  her  part,  and  it  is  for  this  reason,  perhaps, 
that  a  woman,  other  things  being  equal — 
and  often  where  they  are  not  perfectly  equal 
— may  be  a  far  better  teacher  than  a  man. 

While  emphasizing  the  absolute  need  of 
unity  in  the  school,  we  must  not  forget  the 
equal  need  of  a  great  degree  of  fluidity  or 
plasticity.  For  we  are  dealing  with  hu- 
man minds,  and  not  with  material  whose 
laws  are  definitely  known,  and,  as  has  been 
said  before,  with  material  of  which  no  two 
samples  are  alike,  and  all  sorts  of  adjust- 
ments are  continually  to  be  made.  Espe- 
cially is  this  the  case  in  a  private  school  for 
girls,  where  the  pupils  come  to  us  from  all 
sorts  of  teaching  ancl  worse  than  no  teach- 


172 


ing,  and  do  not  all  enter  classes  at  the  same 
time.  Here  again  the  impossible  demands 
to  be  done,  for  neither  unity  nor  plasticity 
must  be  sacrificed;  the  two  must  be  har- 
monized; and  as  the  conditions  are  contin- 
ually changing,  so  a  constant  adjustment 
becomes  necessary.  All  parts  must  contin- 
ually work  together  for  one  common  end. 
It  is  of  no  more  significance  to  the  teacher 
of  a  school  like  this  that  a  thing  is  impossi- 
ble than  it  was  to  Beethoven  that  the  hu- 
man voice  was  not  capable  of  singing  the 
chorus  in  his  Ninth  Symphony.  He  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  capacity  of  the  hu- 
man voice ;  the  music  demanded  that  the 
chorus  should  be  written  so,  and  so  accord- 
ingly he  wrote  it.  A  changeless  school 
programme  cannot  be  arranged  for  an  en- 
tire year,  nor  indeed  for  any  considerable 
part  of  a  year.  Continual  changes  become 
necessary,  but  these  must  be  made  with  the 
least  possible  effect  upon  the  pupils,  and 
the  least  possible  disturbance  of  the  regular 
routine  of  the  school.  Such  tilings  can  be 
done,  and  successfully  done,  but  only  when 
all  the  teachers  in  the  school  are  always  in 
touch,  all  working  with  a  strong  pull  in  the 
same  line,  and  this  because  they  are  all  un- 
der control  of  a  competent  head. 


In  a  school  thus  managed,  disorder  be- 
comes impossible,  and  the  problem  of  gov- 
ernment an  insignificant  factor.  For,  in 
the  first  place,  there  is  no  time  for  the  wan- 
dering of  attention,  which  gives  room  for 
disorder;  and,  in  the  second  place,  the 
whole  spirit  of  the  united  school  is  against 
it.  Governing  does  not  consist  in  allowing 
disorder  to  happen,  and  then  punishing  it. 
It  consists  in  seeing  every  smallest  wander- 
ing of  attention  at  its  very  beginning,  and 
so  preventing  disorder.  To  do  this  the 
teacher  must  be  conscious  of  every  pupil  at 
every  second.  Nothing  is  easier  than  this 
when  one  can  do  it.  The  experienced 
teacher  seems  to  have  acquired  a  kind  of 
sixth  sense,  by  which  she  knows  at  once 
when  she  has  lost  the  attention  of  any  one 
of  twenty  pupils  whose  minds  should  be 
on  the  same  subject.  She  feels  that  in  that 
particular  part  of  the  room  the  electric  cur- 
rent is  not  running;  that  is  all  there  is  of  it. 
To  a  certain  degree,  every  one  who  address- 
es an  audience  has  this  consciousness,  feels 
the  connection  between  himself  and  his 
hearers  as  a  mass,  and  is  inspired  or  dead- 
ened by  its  condition  ;  but  the  teacher  must 
feel  it  with  every  individual  mind  of  the 
class,  and  there  is  no  more  vital  contact 


than  that  of  teacher  and  pupil.  Especially 
is  the  matter  of  order,  and  government  im- 
portant in  girls'  schools,  where  the  popu- 
lar mind  thinks  it  to  be  of  small  conse- 
quence. But  in  this  matter,  as  well  as  in 
that  of  learning,  while  the  mind  of  the 
guide  must  retain  continually  a  strong 
dominating  influence,  the  governing  force 
must  come  from  the  little  girl  herself,  and 
hence  to  arouse  and  cultivate  the  power  of 
self-control  must  be  the  first  aim  in  every 
regulation  of  the  whole  school.  It  is  not  so 
much  knowledge  as  power  that  the  growing 
girl  and  the  mature  woman  need,  and  that 
is  what  the  school  must,  above  all,  give  her, 
or  fail  lamentably  of  its  mission.  There  can 
be  no  greater  reward  for  a  teacher  than  to 
have  one  of  her  girls,  grown  to  womanhood, 
come  to  her  and  say  :  "  I  have  been  through 
such  or  such  a  hard  experience,  and  I  know 
that  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  self-control 
which  I  learned  in  this  school,  I  should 
have  failed;  but  I  thought  of  the  school  and 
of  you,  and  I  went  through  it.  I  had  to 
come  and  tell  you  so."  The  school  to  which 
such  testimony  can  be  brought  is  a  success, 
and  has  no  need  of  long  rows  of  percentages 
of  ninety -nine  against  the  names  of  its 
graduates  in  competitive  examinations. 


But  such  testimony  can  be  won  only 
through  the  eternal  vigilance  of  its  princi- 
pal in  every  smallest  detail  of  its  manage- 
ment. The  unthinking  will  call  her  a 
martinet,  and  the  mothers  who  are  tender 
of  their  children  will  think  her  severe.  But 
the  tenderness  which  seeks  to  arm  the 
woman  for  the  battle  of  life,  and  to  give 
her  adequate  views  of  her  responsibility,  is 
perhaps  not  unworthy  of  its  name,  and 

"need  not  fear  the  spight 
Of  grudging  foes,  ne  favor  ask  of  friends, 
But  in  the  strength  of  its  own  constant  might, 
Neither  to  one  itself  nor  other  bends." 

As  to  bad  schools  —  schools  that  in 
stretching  after  the  mint  and  anise  and 
cumin  lose  all  that  might  have  given  suc- 
cess— they  are  many.  It  seems  sometimes 
that  there  is  no  profession  in  which  there  is 
so  much  humbug  as  in  that  of  education  ; 
and  the  utter  inability  of  the  parent  to 
determine  what  kind  of  a  school  it  is  into 
which  he  decides  to  put  his  little  girl  has, 
to  those  who  stand  behind  the  scenes,  very 
much  of  the  pitiful.  When,  however,  we 
think  of  one  or  two  other  professions,  we 
doubt,  and  are  silent.  One  is  reminded  of 
the  nurse-maid  who  never  stood  in  need  of 


a  thermometer  for  the  water  for  the  baby's 
bath,  because  if  the  baby  came  out  red,  she 
knew  it  had  been  too  hot,  and  if  it  came 
out  blue,  she  knew  it  had  been  too  cold. 
Too  many  a  father  finds,  when  it  is  too 
late,  that  he  made  a  mistake  in  the  school 
to  which  he  trusted  the  training  of  his  little 
girl.  But  how  could  he  have  known  before? 
There  was  much  shrewdness  in  the  employ- 
er who,  quite  unmindful  of  the  applicant's 
having  afterwards  been  graduated  from 
Yale,  engaged  him  at  once  as  soon  as  he 
knew  that  he  had  been  expelled  from  a  cer- 
tain university.  For  a  girl  to  have  been  at 
some  schools  for  any  length  of  time  is  a  cer- 
tificate of  frivolity,  lack  of  consistent  pur- 
pose and  thoroughness,  and,  what  is  of  far 
more  consequence,  of  any  real  reverence  for 
truth  or  her  own  womanhood. 

Dr.  Fitch  says,  "  Human  beings,  whether 
male  or  female,  come  into  the  world  not 
only  Ho  get  a  living,'  but  to  live;  and  the 
life  they  live  depends  largely  on  what  they 
know  and  care  about,  upon  the  breadth  of 
their  intellectual  sympathy,  upon  their  love 
of  truth,  upon  their  power  of  influencing 
and  inspiring  other  minds ;"  and  "even  if 
the  knowledge  or  power  may  seem  to  have 
no  bearing  at  all  upon  the  special  business 


or  definite  duties  of  a  woman,  yet  if  it  be 
felt  by  its  possessor  to  make  life  more  full, 
more  varied,  and  more  interesting  and  bet- 
ter worth  living,  no  other  justification  is 
needed  for  placing  the  largest  opportunities 
within  her  reach."  Two  points  in  these 
words  deserve  special  notice — the  first,  that 
it  is  the  satisfaction  of  the  woman  herself 
in  the  knowledge  acquired,  and  not  the 
opinion  of  the  outside  world,  which  should 
decide  what  she  should  study  ;  and  the  sec- 
ond, the  stress  which  Dr.  Fitch  lays  npon 
the  desirability  of  rendering  her  life  more 
varied  than  it  has  been  in  the  past.  For 
these  have  a  bearing  on  the  arrangement  of 
the  school  studies  for  the  little  girl,  though 
they  are  often  entirely  left  out  of  account 
by  those  who  are  ready  to  tell  the  teacher 
what  should  be  done  in  school.  While  it  is 
true  that  knowledge  should  be  varied — a 
little  in  many  directions  is  far  better,  per- 
haps, than  a  great  deal  in  only  one — it  still 
must  be  insisted  on  that  the  main  object  of 
the  school  is  not  to  convey  information,  but, 
if  the  term  may  be  used  without  offence,  to 
make  the  girl  "  level  -  headed,"  so  that  she 
shall  have  possession  of  herself,  aud  be  able 
to  meet  any  demands,  no  matter  how  unex- 
pected, which  may  front  her  in  the  years  to 
12 


178 


come.  Professor  James  says,  and  truly, 
"  To  give  power  to  suspend  belief  in  pres- 
ence of  an  emotionally  exciting  idea  is  the 
highest  result  of  education."  But  Professor 
William  G.  Hale  had  said  this  before  him, 
aud  not  only  theoretically,  but  practically, 
in  every  Freshman  recitation  in  his  class- 
room at  Cornell  University,  for  the  power 
to  suspend  belief  is  the  very  essence  of  all 
the  teaching  to  translate.  There  could  be 
no  more  apt  illustration  of  the  way  in 
which  character  is  affected  for  better  or 
worse  by  intellectual  teaching  —  which  at 
first  sight  would  seem  to  have  no  connec- 
tion with  morals — than  the  way  in  which 
those  students  are  taught  to  suspend  their 
judgment  over  an  ablative  or  genitive  till 
the  rest  of  the  sentence  has  shown  which 
ablative  or  genitive  it  really  is.  No  woman 
who  has  been  taught  after  this  model  will 
be  very  likely  in  difficult  circumstances  to 
make  up  her  mind  as  to  a  course  of  action 
till  she  has  carefully  taken  note  of  all  the 
elements  which  should  go  to  form  a  decision. 
And  if  this  were  the  characteristic  of  Amer- 
ican women,  how  it  would  transform  Amer- 
ican homes ! 

The  girls  who  go  to  private  schools  are, 
as  a  rule,  from  families  of  at  least  moderate 


179 


wealth.  But  in  our  fluctuating  country  this 
is  no  proof  that  they  will  go  through  their 
lives  without  feeling  the  necessity  of  doing 
something  at  some  time  for  their  own  sup- 
port or  the  support  of  others.  What  that 
will  be  we  cannot  tell,  for  the  march  of  in- 
vention is  so  swift  that  if  we  should  prepare 
the  girl  for  any  one  industry,  she  might  find 
herself  unable  to  make  her  living  out  of  it 
when  the  need  should  come.  She  will  pro- 
bably be,  we  may  say,  a  wife  and  a  mother. 
But  if  we  assume  this,  we  still  do  not  know 
how  to  fit  her  for  the  duties  of  those  posi- 
tions in  a  definite  way.  The  best  thing  still 
is  to  make  the  most  of  a  woman  we  can  out 
of  her,  and  then  to  trust  the  disciplined 
woman  we  have  fashioned  to  answer  for 
herself  the  demands  to  come  to  her  in  the 
misty  future,  which  she  will  see,  and  which 
she  can  judge,  but  which  we  shall  not  see 
and  which  no  man  can  foretell.  The  prov- 
ince of  education  is  to  lift  the  individual 
out  of  her  naturalness,  and  not  to  allow  her 
to  remain  in  it.  All  education  is  this.  The 
child  would  prefer  to  take  her  food  in  her 
fingers,  for  it  is  natural  to  her  to  do  so  ;  but 
education  takes  her  immediately  in  hand, 
and  makes  her  eat  in  the  way  not  of  nature, 
but  of  civilization.  There  is  no  natural 


way  of  education ;  it  is  all  completely  un- 
natural, and  must  be  so.  The  natural  child 
protests  against  discipline  of  whatever  kind, 
and  seeks  to  follow  her  cravings;  but  out  of 
this  fools'  paradise  —  which  would  be  no 
paradise  at  all,  as  her  teacher  knows — she 
must  be  driven,  and  out  of  it  she  must  be 
kept,  though  it  be  with  a  flaming  sword. 
It  has  been  said  that  the  natural  man 
washes  up  on  the  shores  of  knowledge  as 
the  shipwrecked  Irishman  on  the  desert 
island,  exclaiming:  "Is  any  government 
established  in  this  country?  If  so,  I'm 
agin  it !"  This  not  too  strongly  illustrates 
the  opposition  made  by  the  natural  mind  to 
the  training  necessary  for  its  attainment  of 
the  stature  which  rightfully  belongs  to  it  as 
heir  of  all  the  ages.  If  the  home  do  its  work 
well,  the  task  of  the  teacher  and  the  school 
is  comparatively  easy ;  but  there  are  too 
many  American  families,  as  every  teacher 
knows,  where  this  work  has  not  been  done, 
and  where,  consequently,  much  effort  has  to 
be  spent  in  supplementing  the  lack  of  skill 
or  the  foolish  indulgence  of  the  mother. 
When  a  little  six-year-old  girl  on  her  first 
day  at  school  tries  to  strike  her  teacher  over 
the  head  with  her  heavy  slate  because  she  is 
told  to  do  some  little  thing,  we  may  not  tin- 


reasonably  assume  that  that  home  has  failed 
of  its  purpose,  if  indeed  it  ever  had  any. 

The  main  object  of  the  school  may  be  said 
to  be  to  create  character,  and  for  this  end 
it  should  seize  upon  every  opportunity  of 
strengthening  the  will  and  of  making  it 
controlled  and  consecrated.  There  is  no 
lesson  and  no  regulation  which  may  not  be 
consciously  used  for  this;  and  when  every- 
thing is  used  for  this  purpose,  everything 
will  fall  into  its  .proper  place,  and  the 
school  will  be  what  it  should  be.  The  soul, 
which  is  the  person,  is  not  divisible ;  we 
cannot  work  on  the  intellect  without  affect- 
ing the  play  of  the  feelings ;  nor  can  there 
be  in  the  life  of  man  or  woman  any  great 
moral  lapse  without  tbe  intellect's  suffer- 
ing. Wherever  God's  distinctions  are 
blurred  in  any  one  of  the  so-called  faculties 
of  the  soul,  the  power  of  distinction  is 
blurred  in  all.  The  soul  is  one,  and  any 
school  will  be  a  failure,  no  matter  how 
much  money  it  may  make,  where  this  truth 
does  not  stand  at  the  foundation  of  every 
detail  of  its  work.  Two  hundred  years  ago 
Mary  Astell  wrote,  as  she  was  pleading  for 
a  wider  education  for  her  countrywomen, 
"The  great  secret  of  education  lies  in  affect- 
ing the  soul  with  a  lively  sense  of  what  is 


182 


truly  its  perfection,  and  exerting  the  most 
ardent  desires  after  it."  We  can  find  no 
wiser  word  in  all  tlie  pedagogical  societies 
of  to-day.  I  quote  also,  as  bearing  on  the 
same  point,  from  an  article  by  the  Rev.  L. 
A.  Griffin  in  the  Unitarian  Review :  "  The 
teacher  reflects  not  t  What  shall  I  have 
when  I  am  forgotten  T  but  'What  shall  I  be 
when  I  forget  ?  When  all  I  know  has  van- 
ished, leaving  only  its  effect  on  character, 
what  shall  I  have  T  Shall  the  inner  man  re- 
call his  aliment  any  more  than  the  outer  I 
In  both  alike  it  passes  away,  for  its  function 
is  fulfilled;  it  was  not  to  be  stored,  but  as- 
similated. Men  will  hereafter  boast  of 
what  they  knew  no  more  than  of  what  they 
ate.  There  is  naught  we  know  now  that 
we  may  need  to  know  hereafter,  but  what 
we  are  now,  in  every  worthy  quality  of  the 
spirit,  that  we  must  needs  be,  so  long  as  it 
pleases  God  to  continue  us  in  life."  It 
might  be  well  for  teachers  to  ponder  these 
things  in  their  hearts. 

The  teachers  who  attain  to  and  hold  this 
doctrine  firmly,  carrying  it  out  in  every 
smallest  detail  of  their  daily  work,  consti- 
tute the  profession,  and  they  need  no  di- 
ploma from  any  school  of  pedagogy.  The 
rest  belong  more  or  less  to  a  trade-union, 


183 


which  seasons  its  talk  with  the  usual 
amount  of  cant.  Next  to  religious  cant, 
there  is  nothing  so  disgusting  as  education- 
al cant.  Tbe  members  of  the  profession  are 
all  artists,  and  they  live  in  regions  and  par- 
take of  divine  pleasures  of  which  the  world 
knows  not.  In  the  great  future  profession- 
al Verein,  if  this  ever  exist,  they  will  asso- 
ciate with  Theodore  Thomas,  whose  whole 
career,  as  George  William  Curtis  says,  has 
been  a  campaign  of  education/' because  of 
its  dignity,  its  absolute  fidelity  to  a  high 
ideal,  and  its  total  freedom  from  charlatanry 
of  every  kind."  But  such  company  as  this 
is  to  be  won  only  by  a  very  high  quality  of 
courage  and  persistence.  Of  the  forces  at 
work  tending  in  the  other  direction,  we  may 
know  more  clearly  when  we  come  to  consid- 
er some  of  the  conditions  under  which  the 
teacher  of  the  private  school  for  girls  must 
work  in  any  American  city. 

Professional  teachers  know  that  they  can- 
not test  the  worth  of  their  effect  on  their 
pupils  by  abstract  arithmetical  signs.  They 
know  that  the  girl  is  not  an  arithmetical 
problem,  but  a  living  soul,  and  they  are  ever 
aiming  at  moral  and  educational  influences, 
to  which  marks  and  daily  percentages  are 
only  impediments.  Sometimes  they  labor 


184 


for  these  ends  under  fetters  \vhich  make  of 
their  most  worthy  efforts  only  continual 
failures.  I  know  of  two  strong  women  at 
this  moment  who  are  working  under  protest 
as  heads  of  large  schools,  because  they  can- 
not get  authority  from  the  trustees  of  the 
schools  to  abolish  the  use  of  what  one  of 
them  wittily  calls  "weak  stimulants"  to 
induce  her  girls  to  study.  She  sees  the  evil 
effect  of  the  marks,  prizes,  and  rewards 
which  are  daily  and  yearly  given,  and 
knows  that  she  is  gaining  only  a  factitious 
success  while  she  is  using  them.  Again  and 
again  she  has  begged  to  be  allowed  to 
abolish  the  whole  old  system,  and  to  show 
what  she  could  do,  both  intellectually  and 
morally,  if  she  could  bring  to  bear  only  the 
real  stimulant  of  interest  in  work  for  the 
work's  sake.  She  has  represented  the  evil 
effects,  which  she  cannot  avoid  seeing,  on 
the  characters  of  the  girls ;  but  her  protest 
has  been  so  far  of  no  use,  and  she  does  the 
best  she  can,  knowing  that  the  whole  ten- 
dency is  in  the  wrong  direction,  but  unable 
to  straighten  it.  The  other  in  the  same 
situation  came  to  me  a  few  years  ago  with 
the  question  how,  since  she  was  not  allowed 
to  do  the  educationally  right  thing,  she  was 
to  diminish  as  far  as  possible  the  evil  effect 


of  the  wrong  order.  After  a  long  conversa- 
tion, in  which  she  showed  by  her  questions 
that  she  knew  exactly  what  she  wanted  to 
get  at,  she  said,  with  a  deep  sigh,  "  I  see  ;  it 
is  of  no  use  to  try  anything  unless  you  cau 
make  the  thing  right  from  the  bottom  up." 
She  had  got  a  new  insight  into  the  way  in 
which  a  school  might  be  founded  so  on 
principle  that  "  the  stout-hearted  trunk  be- 
low and  the  firm-set  roots"  would  take  care 
of  the  branches  and  the  twigs,  out  to  the 
farthest  little  tips,  but  it  grew  for  her  in  a 
land  that  was  very  far  oif. 

I  am  sure  that  I  utter  the  simple  truth 
when  I  say  that  if  the  private  schools  for 
girls  are  failing  to-day,  they  are  failing  not 
primarily  because  of  the  low  aims  or  the 
lack  of  insight  of  the  women  who  stand  at 
their  heads.  I  know,  and  pretty  well,  a 
great  many  principals  of  girls'  schools,  and 
I  know  that  in  a  large  majority  of  cases  they 
want  and  try  to  do  better  things  for  their 
girls  than  the  mothers  will  let  them  do. 
They  deserve  that  some  one  who  knows 
should  make  widely  public  this  testimony 
to  their  character  and  their  aspirations,  as 
well  as  to  the  discouragement  under  which 
they  are  forced  to  do  their  daily  work.  An 
Englishwoman  said  lately,  in  the  London 


186 


Journal  of  Education,  with  a  keenness  of 
insight  for  which  every  teacher  will  respect 
her :  "  In  England  the  choice  of  schools  is 
almost  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  parents ; 
but  here  [in  America]  it  is  very  frequently 
entirely  left  to  the  children,  and  as  at  the 
end  of  every  school  year  pupils  are  free  to 
leave  without  notice,  the  principal  is  obliged 
to  depend  for  her  school  connection  on  the 
whims  and  caprices  of  the  girls.  This  ne- 
cessitates a  constant  attention  to  their  com- 
fort and  happiness,  which,  though  beneficial 
in  many  respects,  is  apt  to  allow  the  consid- 
eration of  temporary  ease  to  overrule  that 
of  the  girl's  highest  good."  The  truth  is 
that  there  are  to-day  in  every  American 
city  a  large  number  of  highly  educated  and 
cultivated  women  of  the  noblest  character 
and  aims  who  are  too  often  literally  at  the 
mercy  of  the  whims  and  caprices  of  a  lot  of 
ignorant,  often  under-bred,  and  petted  little 
gi  rls. 

The  conditions  under  which  the  girls' 
private  school  must  exist  remain  t'o  be  more 
fully  spoken  of.  The  average  mother  is  most 
especially  anxious  that  her  little  girl  shall 
not  suffer  from  the  home  treatment  which 
she  feels  was  a  mistake  in  her  own  case  ; 
but  instead  of  considering  from  any  phil- 


187 


osophical  point  of  view  the  treatment  which 
is  needed,  taking  into  account  the  different 
nature  of  the  child,  the  different  circum- 
stances, and  the  different  influences  which 
are  around  her,  and  then  making  and  work- 
ing upon  a  reasonable  plan,  she  resolves  to  do 
only  the  diametrical  opposite  of  that  which 
was  done  with  herself.  As  the  little  girl 
grows  up,  she  does  the  same  with  her  own 
children,  and  thus  there  results  in  one  fam- 
ily a  pulse  of  sternness  and  indulgence 
which  bids  fair  to  perpetuate  itself,  not  in 
favor  of  advancement,  unless  there  can  be 
secured  for  the  girls  of  this  generation  what 
I  have  already  referred  to  as  being  the  chief 
end  of  all  education — an  ability  to  poise  the 
judgment  in  the  presence  of  emotionally  ex- 
citing causes.  If  we  can  secure  this,  we 
have  secured  potentially  everything.  It 
must  be  noticed,  however,  that  this  assumes 
the  existence  of  the  cultivation  of  some- 
thing that  can  be  called  judgment — a  thing 
hardly  to  be  tested  by  the  percentages 
which  so  many  schools  produce  as  evidence 
that  they  have  done  the  work  rightfully  be- 
longing to  them. 

Parents  may  be  roughly  divided  into  two 
classes  —  those,  to  use  a  proverbial  expres- 
sion, to  whom  all  their  own  geese  are  swans; 


and  those  who  are  persuaded  that  their 
swans  are  geese ;  there  is  a  middle  class, 
but  it  is  so  very  small  that  it  may  almost 
be  disregarded  in  a  description.  Strange  to 
say,  the  second  class  is  quite  as  large  as  the 
first.  Then,  again,  with  regard  to  confi- 
dence in  their  own  judgment,  they  may  be 
divided  also  into  two  classes  —  those  who 
desire  no  suggestions  from  the  teacher,  and 
become  very  angry  if  they  are  offered ;  and 
those  who  will  not  be  satisfied  till  she  tells 
them  whether  they  shall  put  corned -beef, 
tongue,  or  ham  into  the  sandwiches  which 
the  child  is  to  bring  for  luncheon  if  they 
should  decide  to  send  her  to  that  school. 
Between  the  danger  of  offending  if  we  sug- 
gest anythiug,  and  that  of  offending  if  we 
do  not  at  once  answer  categorically  any 
question  which  may  be  sprung  upon  us,  the 
problem  of  first  conversations  with  parents 
presents  considerable  difficulty. 

The  teacher's  position  in  the  educational 
world  is  that  of  the  physician,  and  not  that 
of  the  trained  nurse ;  this  is  a  point  which 
is  not  generally  understood,  and  one  that 
needs  to  be  insisted  on.  It  is  as  respectable 
to  be  a  nurse  as  to  be  a  doctor,  but  the  fact 
remains  that  if  you  are  competent  to  be  the 
latter,  you  do  not  consent  to  be  put  by  the 


relations  of  the  patient  into  the  place  of  the 
former.  What  physician  would  accept  a 
case  if  the  father  and  mother  of  the  little 
patient,  to  say  nothing*  of  the  aunts  and 
uncles  and  grandmothers,  were  to  prescribe 
the  medicines,  and  he  were  expected  only  to 
give  them  ?  And  yet  this  is  exactly  what 
parents  too  often  propose  to  do  in  the  case 
of  the  education  of  their  girls.  There  is  no 
fancy  in  this  statement.  I  have  known  of  a 
father  who  took  five  children  at  once  out  of 
a  school,  though  he  had  engaged  places  for 
them  months  before,  because  the  teacher  ar- 
ranged to  change  one  study  for  one  of  the 
five ;  the  girl  was  gaining  nothing  in  the 
study  which  was  to  be  dropped,  and  the  one 
proposed  was  in  the  same  line,  and  yet,  by 
its  difference  and  novelty,  might  be  hoped 
to  accomplish  that  which  the  other  had 
failed  to  do.  That  was  the  judgment  of  the 
teacher,  and  she  had  known  the  girl  for 
years  and  understood  her  character,  as  she 
did  that  of  every  other  girl  in  her  school. 
She  declined  to  be  put  in  the  position  of  a 
nurse,  and  to  teach  the  child  only  what  the 
parent  prescribed.  It  was  a  question  of 
principle,  and  of  respect  for  the  profession. 
The  five  sisters  left  the  school.  The  father 
was  a  physician.  This  story  could  be  par- 


alleled  over  and  over  again  from  the  re- 
membrance of  every  professional  teacher. 

One  often  regrets  that  she  cannot,  at 
least  for  a  time,  live  in  a  country  where  the 
question  of  precedence  is  fixed,  and  some- 
times looks  back  longingly  to  the  caste 
system  in  India.  It  is  easy  to  remember 
the  time  when  many  a  New  England  vil- 
lage, at  least,  had  circles  of  what  was  real- 
ly "  the  best  society,"  into  which  no  amount 
of  wealth  could  give  entrance.  We  all 
know  that  there  was  such  a  time  even  in 
New  York,  but  that  time  is  long  gone  by ; 
it  takes  people  of  steady  heads  to  live  there 
now  and  not  get  drawn  into  the  great  cur- 
rents of  society  which  swirl  around  them, 
not  to  desire  to  make  as  much  show  as  their 
neighbors,  not  to  have  all  simple  and  sweet 
home  life  spoiled  by  the  outside  influences. 
It  is  doubly  hard  if  one  has  lately  come  into 
possession  of  money,  and  sees  the  whole  city 
filled  with  all  sorts  of  indulgences  and  show 
wrhich  his  money  can  purchase.  So  it  often 
happens  that  a  family  which,  if  it  had  lived 
in  some  country  place,  would  have  been  a 
delight  to  see,  gets  carried  oif  its  feet  by  the 
mad  rush  of  the  currents  around  it,  fascinat- 
ed by  the  glitter,  and  loses  all  its  own  char- 
acter by  becoming  one  more  of  the  strug- 


191 


gliug  drops  which  are  trying  to  overtop 
each  other  in  the  social  ocean.  Now  the 
private  schools  for  girls,  as  has  been  said 
before,  are  composed  almost  entirely  of 
daughters  of  wealthy  families,  and  the  par- 
ents are  subject  to  all  these  influences. 

It  is  a  hard  thing  to  utter,  and  yet  it  is 
the  truth,  that  the  mothers  do  not  really 
mean  what  they  say  when  they  tell  you 
that  what  they  ardently  desire  is  tbe  best 
education  possible  for  their  girls.  They 
may  think  so,  but  what  they  really  want 
for  the  little  girl  is  that  she  shall  grow  up 
into  what  an  Englishwoman  says  "  we  ex- 
pect American  girls  to  be  —  bright,  witty, 
apparently  intelligent,  and  possessed  of  suf- 
ficient knowledge  to  conceal  an  ignorance 
of  which  they  may  or  may  not  be  con- 
scious." The  President  of  Wellesley  Col- 
lege once  showed  a  foreign  gentleman  who 
was  supposed  to  have  a  great  interest  in  ed- 
ucation, over  the  buildings.  He  listened  to 
the  work  of  the  eager  students,  saw  all  the 
beautiful  things  which  had  been  provided, 
and  as  he  said  farewell  at  the  door,  re- 
marked, with  great  interest,  "  This  is  all 
very  fine,  but  may  I  venture  to  ask,  how 
does  it  affect  their  chances  ?"  The  story 
carries  its  own  suggestion.  It  is  really  true 


that  what  the  mother  is  in  many  cases 
thinking  of,  when  she  selects  a  school  for 
her  little  girl,  is  not  whether  the  teaching  is 
what  it  ought  to  be,  but  how  association 
with  the  girls  already  members  of  the  school 
in  question  will  "  affect  her  chances.'7  To  a 
real  teacher  the  tardily  acquired  knowledge 
that  the  school  to  which  she  has  given  her 
life  and  all  her  power  is  regarded  simply  as 
a  social  "  Exchange,"  only  as  a  means  by 
which  some  young  woman  may  press  her 
way  into  a  certain  "  set,"  comes  as  an  in- 
sult. If  that  is  what  the  school  is  for,  were 
it  not  better  to  do  any  other  work  than 
this  ?  Pearls  are  very  beautiful  things, 
and  it  takes  much  deep-sea  diving  where 
the  billows  go  over  one's  head  to  gain  them. 
She  may  perhaps  find  some  bitter  consola- 
tion for  her  pain  by  recognizing  the  fact 
that  people  do  not  hesitate  to  use  the 
churches  of  the  city  for  the  same  purpose, 
but  her  work  drags  heavily  after  the  dis- 
covery has  been  made. 

The  girls  that  attend  private  schools — 
mostly  from  the  moneyed  class — have  scarce- 
ly any  remembrance  of  nursery  life,  and  of 
simple  games  and  pleasures.  From  their 
earliest  years  they  have  been  satiated  with 
all  sorts  of  ingenious  toys,  fit  things  for 


adults,  but  not  for  children.  Mauy  of  them 
have  spent  every  summer  of  their  lives  in 
large  hotels,  amusing  the  loungers  on  the 
piazzas  with  their  speeches  and  their  dresses ; 
they  have  been  carefully  shielded  from  pain 
and  trial  of  any  kind.  Effort  has  been  a 
stranger  to  them.  What  wonder  that  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  lead  them  to  make  real  and  persistent 
effort  on  their  school  tasks !  What  wonder 
that  they  balk  at  any  honest  and  unsparing 
work !  Many  of  them  are  under  the  spell  of 
hereditary  tendencies  handed  down  from  an- 
cestors of  varied  nationality,  who  earned 
"their  bread  by  the  sweat  of  their  brows  and 
the  skill  of  their  hands,  while  their  children 
and  grandchildren  have  nothing  to  do. 
Among  no  children,  perhaps,  is  the  tendency 
to  mental  mechanism  so  strong  as  among  the 
Americans.  It  is  not,  perhaps,  entirely  the 
fault  of  the  teachers  that  this  tendency  has 
had  its  course  and  been  glorified  in  our 
schools.  But  it  is  the  teacher's  great  duty 
to  fight  it,  if  she  would  produce  in  never  so 
small  a  degree  out  of  these  languid,  amuse- 
ment-desiring minds  anything  which  may  be 
fit  to  stand  the  storm  and  strain  of  life — to 

"  keep  at  bay 

The  changeful  April  sky  of  chance 
And  the  strong  tide  of  circumstance." 
13 


194 


Few  people  realize  in  the  least  degree  the 
change  iu  the  popular  philosophy  which,  hi 
this  country  especially,  has  transformed  the 
whole  aspect  of  teaching  within  forty  years. 
Miss  Beale,  the  well-known  principal  of  the 
college  for  girls  at  Cheltenham,  England, 
says :  "  The  tabula  rasa  theory  of  Locke, 
the  impressionist,  has  given  way  to  the  mixed 
idealism  of  Kant,  who  emphasizes  the  con- 
structive power  of  the  mind  j  and  for  passive 
creations  we  have  substituted  the  theory  of 
active  development.  Once  we  thought  rath- 
er of  the  child  as  acted  upon ;  now  we  think 
much  more  of  making  her  active,  of  invig- 
orating, of  showing  her  how  to  learn."  It 
is  probable  that  not  many  have  realized  how 
all-powerful  has  been  this  influence  in  every 
smallest  school -room  iu  the  land.  There 
could  be  no  more  beautiful  and  striking  ex- 
ample of  the  secondary  nature  of  the  work 
of  education,  and  none  more  wonderful  in 
showing  the  fruitful  power  of  really  great 
thoughts— how  they  filter  down  and  pene- 
trate the  strata  of  thought  and  life  which 
would  seem  farthest  removed  from  them. 
The  teacher  of  children  now  does  not  keep 
in  mind  the  subject  she  is  teaching  so  much 
as  the  mind  of  the  child;  that  it  is  which 
she  is  working  on,  and  the  studies  are  only 


the  tools  that  are  used ;  it  is  the  live  mind 
of  the  child  that  she  is  watching,  and  by  its 
reactions  she  directs  her  labor.  The  parent 
should  decide  upon  the  school  to  which  the 
little  girl  is  to  go  by  the  best  light  he  has, 
and  when  the  decision  is  made,  he  should 
leave  the  child  to  the  teacher,  in  the  same 
way  as  he  would  leave  the  arrangement  of 
the  pipes  in  his  house  to  the  best  plumber 
he  knows.  If  the  teacher  be  not  better 
fitted  to  direct  the  education  of  the  child 
than  is  the  parent,  then  she  is  not  a  fit  per- 
son to  be  at  the  head  of  the  school,  or,  in- 
deed, to  teach  at  all. 

In  addition  to  all  these  conditions  under 
which,  at  least  in  America,  the  school  has  to 
work,  there  must  not  be  forgotten  the  pres- 
ent excited  state  of  the  public  mind  with  re- 
gard to  education.  This  produces,  to  supply 
a  constantly  increasing  demand  for  better 
results,  a  vast  number  of  new  "  systems"  and 
"  crazes,"  towards  which  the  teacher  is 
pushed,  if  she  have  not  strength  enough  to 
keep  steady  in  her  course.  The  schools  do 
not  depend  so  much  as  of  old  on  the  services 
of  teachers  or  lecturers  who  come  in  only 
for  special  hours,  and  who  therefore  cannot 
work  into  the  general  effect  of  the  whole 
school,  and  this  is  well.  But,  on  the  other 


196 


hand,  we  have  all  sorts  of  so  -  called  Dew 
ways  presented.  I  thiuk  if  Pestalozzi  and 
Froebel  were  now  living,  they  would  ask  for 
new  names,  so  weary  would  they  he  of  hav- 
ing all  sorts  of  crude  and  absurd  labor  as- 
cribed to  them,  though  the  spirit  in  which 
they  worked  is  in  the  schools — especially 
the  girls'  schools — to-day  everywhere.  But 
to  do  just  what  they  did  in  other  countries, 
circumstances,  and  times,  is  to  destroy  that 
spirit.  Then  we  have  those  who  claim  a 
great  discovery  in  the  "  natural  method  "  of 
teaching,  and  who  forget  that  the  natural 
order  of  acquisition  must  always  differ  wide- 
ly from  the  logical  order  of  exposition.  In 
the  study  of  languages  these  people  would 
have  us  throw  away  all  that  we  have  already 
gained  of  facility,  and  reduce  ourselves  to  a 
state  of  primitive  ignorance,  assuming  that 
because  a  child  through  his  poverty  is 
obliged  to  learn  in  such  a  way,  we  with  our 
experience  and  stored  minds  must  also  do  so. 
They  would  have  the  carpenter  throw  a  way 
his  tools  and  build  houses  with  his  hands,  or 
the  implements  which  he  should  be  able  to 
fashion  for  himself,,  not  those  which  the  prac- 
tice of  all  the  ages  has  given  him  as  his  birth- 
right. They  forget  that  the  child  mind  and 
that  of  the  adult  are  so  different  as  to  be  al- 


most  of  different  stuff,  ami  insist  upon  teach- 
ing us  as  if  we  were  children,  in  spite  of  our 
humble  protest  that  we  are  no  longer  so. 
They  remind  us  of  the  old  people  who  used 
to  insist  upon  it  that  we  should  go  to  bed 
when  and  because  the  chickens  went  to 
roost.  Even  in  our  childhood  we  dimly  felt 
that  the  reasoning  was  faulty  somewhere, 
long  before  we  timidly  ventured  to  suggest 
that  we  were  not  chickens,  and  also  that  we 
did  not  go  to  roost.  Because  a  child  who 
knew  nothing  had  to  learn  English  in  the 
"  natural  way  " — though  even  this  assertion 
is  not  absolutely  true  as  it  stands — it  does 
not  follow  that  she  must  learn  French  in  the 
same  way  after  she  has  acquired  some  knowl- 
edge of  English,  and  it  by  no  means  follows 
that  any  foreigner  who  may  have  immigrated 
is  the  best  teacher  for  her.  The  manual- 
training  craze  is  one  of  the  latest.  It  is  true 
that  for  a  joint  to  fit  or  a  seam  to  go  into  its 
place  without  a  wrinkle,  the  maker  must 
work  with  accuracy  ;  but  it  is  also  true  that 
she  must  be  accurate  with  an  example  in 
arithmetic  if  she  is  to  solve  it,  and  there  is 
no  one  of  all  the  qualities  claimed  to  be  won 
for  the  mind  by  manual  training  which  can- 
not also  be  secured  without  it,  if  the  school 
be  what  it  ought  to  be.  The  colleges  for 


198 


women  were  expected  to  raise  the  level  of 
teaching  in  the  girls'  schools,  and  some  prin- 
cipals have  gone  so  far  as  to  say  that  in  fut- 
ure they  will  have  none  but  college-trained 
women  for  teachers.  JBut  it  is  a  great  dis- 
advantage to  a  teacher  to  have  been  for  four 
years  entirely  out  of  touch  with  children  and 
with  the  regulations  which,  not  in  place  in 
a  college,  are  yet  imperatively  necessary  in 
a  school  for  children.  And,  again,  the  new 
methods  of  teaching  penetrate  the  colleges 
slowly.  The  larger  part  of  the  work  in  them 
is,  as  it  should  be  with  comparatively  ma- 
ture minds,  in  the  form  of  lectures,  not  of 
recitations,  and  generally  the  college  gradu- 
ate is  entirely  ignorant  of  what  a  recitation 
is.  It  takes  her  a  long  time  to  get  out  of  the 
ways  to  which  she  has  been  accustomed, 
and  to  grasp  the  conditions  under  which 
she  must  labor  with  the  mind  of  the  child, 
so  poor  in  material,  and  generally  so  want- 
ing in  anything  that  can  be  called  imagina- 
tion. To  know  about  a  subject,  and  to 
know  about  teaching  it,  are  two  entirely 
different  things.  What  we  do  need  for  those 
intending  to  teach  is  a  normal  school  with  a 
course  of  at  least  a  year  at  the  top  of  the 
college  course.  I  can  imagine  no  more  de- 
lightful work,  unless  it  be  giving  a  child  its 


199 


first  lessons  in  language,  than  to  have  the 
management  of  such  a  school;  hut  such  a 
school,  with  the  competent  teacher  as  its 
head,  lies  far  in  the  future.  Towards  it  all 
the  psychologists  are  working.  In  view  of 
the  great  problems  which  teaching  presents, 
and  the  great  value  of  wide  experience  in  it? 
it  might  be  worth  while  for  the  colleges  to 
insert  a  course  in  Humility  for  the  last  part 
of  the  Senior  year,  especially  for  the  benefit 
of  those  who  are  proposing  to  teach.  The 
profession  to  which  Dr.  Arnold  belonged  is 
not  to  be  stormed  by  girls  simply  because 
they  have  read  Latin  and  Greek,  and  the 
questions  which  waylay  its  every  step  are 
not  to  be  so  lightly  settled. 

For  the  girls'  school  the  question  of  health 
is  a  grave  one.  If  the  children  in  the  aver- 
age American  home  were  properly  fed,  prop- 
erly dressed,  and  properly  exercised,  if  they 
had  plenty  of  fresh  air  and  plenty  of  sleep, 
if  they  were  allowed  to  grow  in  quietness, 
with  simple  pleasures,  and  in  an  atmosphere 
undisturbed  by  the  passions  and  ambitions 
of  the  grown-up  world,  our  task  would  indeed 
be  easy.  If  the  mothers  could  understand 
that  health  and  activity  of  the  mind  are  an 
essential  to  health  of  the  body,  we  should 
be  in  a  sort  of  paradise.  There  is  one  phrase 


which  I  ain  sure  uo  teacher  of  girls  who  may 
read  these  pages  will  he  ahle  to  see  without 
a  sinile.  It  is  this:  "  Health  is  the  first  con- 
sideration." It  generally  comes  from  the 
lips  of  mothers  of  homes  where  little  if  any 
reasonable  thought  is  given  to  the  question 
of  health  till  the  doctor  becomes  a  frequent 
visitor,  and  kindly  provides  this  formula. 
The  teacher  can  do  nothing  with  a  child  if 
she  be  not  healthy.  To  her,  indeed,  health 
is  the  first  consideration,  and  all  her  efforts 
are  towards  its  maintenance.  But  such  as 
the  mothers  have  made  the  children  that 
they  bring  us  to  teach,  we  have  to  work 
with  them,  and  to  do  the  best  we  can.  This 
is  little  enough  in  many  cases. 

I  have  noted  some  few  of  the  difficult  con- 
ditions under  which  the  teacher  of  a  private 
school  for  girls  has  to  live.  If  she  have  uo 
one  dependent  upon  her,  so  as  to  make  the 
money-success  of  her  enterprise  a  matter  of 
life  or  death,  even  in  that  case  she  will  need 
all  the  persistence  of  Grant  and  all  the  dash 
and  courage  of  Sherman  to  carry  her  for 
years  along  the  paths  which  she  is  under 
bonds  to  her  profession  to  follow,  and  to  be 
true  to  herself  and  to  justice.  Personal  in- 
fluence must  have  no  power  to  make  her 
think  of  surrendering  a  principle;  failure 


201 


arising  from  causes  entirely  beyond  her  con- 
trol to  carry  out  her  plans  for  the  whole 
school,  or  for  individuals,  must  not  avail  to 
weaken  her  courage  ;  she  must  learn  to  live 
above  immediate  results  and  in  the  region 
of  purposes.  If  she  be  not  too  much  ham- 
pered by  pecuniary  needs  for  herself  or  for 
those  dearer,  she  may  carry  out  her  ideal, 
and  do  really  good  and  lasting  work  to  a 
limited  extent.  If,  however,  she  be  so  ham- 
pered, we  should  blame  not  her  so  much  as 
the  unthinking  demand  of  the  public  which 
has  forced  her  to  surrender,  as  she  often 
does,  though  at  the  cost  of  some  of  her  own 
self-respect.  If  the  object  of  a  school  be 
simply  to  make  money,  then,  of  course,  it 
falls  under  the  head  of  business  enterprises, 
and  anything  short  of  dishonesty  is  allow- 
able. If  the  school  is  to  be  kept  up,  pupils 
must  be  found  for  it ;  and  it  is  so  easy  to 
agree  to  do  this  or  that  thing  to  secure  two 
or  three  pupils  when  the  last  year's  accounts 
showed  a  deficit !  It  is  only  to  throw  a  hand- 
ful of  incense  into  the  flame  perpetually 
burning  on  the  altar  of  "  society."  And  yet 
this  cannot  be  done.  To  hold  a  school  up 
to  the  highest  standard  of  excellence,  and 
this  by  unceasing  vigilance,  is  one  thing  ;  to 
manage  it  so  as  to  make  the  most  money  and 


202 

to  gain  the  most  friends,  is  another.  The 
teacher  who  tries  to  do  both  will  proba- 
bly not  succeed  in  the  first.  The  aim  must 
be  single,  and  the  purpose  unfaltering,  the 
courage  lofty,  and  there  must  be  no  looking 
for  results ;  they  are  in  safe  hands,  and  do 
not  belong  to  the  worker. 

As  to  the  studies  which  should  hold  the 
foremost  place  in  a  school  for  girls,  it  may 
be  said  that  they  should  not  be  mathemat- 
ics, the  training  power  of  which  lies  along 
a  very  narrow  track.  It  is  hardly  worth 
while  to  force  very  much  work  here  if  the 
girl  be  not  inclined  to  it,  this  because  it  is 
wasted  labor,  not  simply  because  she  does 
not  like  the  subject.  I  believe,  although 
there  are  minds  that  seem  to  lack  entirely 
the  mathematical  sense,  that  in  most  of  the 
cases  where  there  exists  a  thorough  dislike 
of  arithmetic,  it  is  simply  because  of  poor 
teaching  at  the  beginning.  In  some  of  these 
cases,  if  the  pupil  be  not  too  old,  the  evil 
may  be  remedied ;  but  if  she  is,  we  may 
often  flank  the  trouble  by  algebra  under 
good  teaching;  and  this  is  a  far  better  way 
than  keeping  her  on  arithmetic  when  she  is 
really  too  old  to  be  studying  it.  In  mathe- 
matics, perhaps,  more  than  in  any  other 
branch,  we  too  seldom  have  children  intrust- 


203 


ed  to  us  till  they  have  been  already  spoiled 
in  the  hands  of  anxious  parents  who  are  not 
teachers,  or  of  ignorant  nursery  governesses. 
In  fact,  in  private  schools  in  America  too 
often  we  get  no  chance  at  the  girl's  mind 
till  it  is  already  half  spoiled ;  and  then,  after 
we  have  done  all  we  can  to  remedy  the 
trouble,  and  are  just  getting  her  where  she 
can  do  something,  she  is  taken  away  from 
us  to  go  into  society.  Our  work  is  thus  cut 
at  both  ends,  and  it  is  not  our  fault,  but  our 
misfortune,  that  we  do  so  little. 

There  exists  of  late  years  a  widely  spread 
impression  that  natural  science  should  be 
the  main  object  of  study.  It  must  not  be 
forgotten,  however,  that  science  is  not  a 
mere  collection  of  facts,  but  a  system  of 
laws  deduced  according  to  some  principle 
of  wise  selection  from  them,  and  all  facts  are 
not  of  the  same  value.  There  would  be  no 
object,  scientifically  speaking,  in  measuring 
the  length  and  width  of  rose-petals  and  care- 
fully noting  the  same  in  neat  little  books. 
The  lessons  given  in  many  schools  under  the 
head  of  natural  science  are  not  lessons  in 
science  at  all.  The  child's  mind  is  not  up 
to  the  level  of  scientific  teaching,  and  all 
that  it  can  do  in  the  line  of  nature  is  to  col- 
lect or  to  learn  facts,  which,  because  it  has 


204 


no  means  of  classification,  soon  drop  out  of 
the  memory.  Fortunate  is  it  that  they  do 
so ;  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  where  we  should 
get  sensible  women  enough  to  run  the  world 
for  the  next  generation  if  God  had  not  mer- 
cifully given  to  children  the  power  of  for- 
getting. The  main  thing  to  be  gained  by 
lessons  in  natural  science  is  a  feeling  of  rev- 
erent wonder  for  the  Creator.  The  moral 
lessons  which  may  be  thrown  in  as  one 
traces  His  ways  of  working  in  mineral,  plant, 
and  animal,  such  as  ecomony,  foresight,  care, 
adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  and  order,  are 
of  great  value;  in  fact,  this  is  perhaps  the 
"best  chance  that  we  have  for  moral  teach- 
ing. But  the  disciplinary  value  of  these 
studies  for  young  children  is  greatly  exag- 
gerated ;  and  we  must  never  forget  that 
with  children  it  is  the  disciplinary  value  of 
a  study  that  we,  as  teachers,  have  first  to 
consider.  The  main  part  of  education  comes 
after  the  school  days  are  over.  If  the  school 
succeed  in  putting  the  girl  in  possession  of 
herself,  so  that  she  may  be  able  to  use  her 
faculties  intelligently  for  her  future  growth, 
if  it  open  to  her  paths  of  rest  and  refuge 
from  the  too  pressing  care,  or  perhaps  the 
otherwise  overpowering  sorrow  which  may 
come  to  her.  it  has  done  its  work.  As  an 


205 


English  educational  writer  asks,  is  the  value 
of  natural  science  teaching  practical,  cult- 
ural, or  disciplinary?  Questions  such  as 
this  form  a  large  and,  I  might  almost  say, 
the  chief  part  of  the  teacher's  work,  though 
the  parent  who  wants  more  time  g'ven  to 
natural  science  has  probably  not  been  aware 
of  their  existence,  and  yet  sets  her  opinion 
over  against  yours  with  an  amusing  assump- 
tion that  it  is  of  equal  weight.  I  doubt 
whether  in  any  other  profession  this  is  so 
much  the  case. 

When  we  come  to  language  in  all  its  va- 
ried manifestations,  we  have  reached  a  sub- 
ject which  affords  unlimited  scope  for  dis- 
ciplinary work,  while  at- the  same  time  it 
opens  fields  of  pleasure  and  profit  that  are 
practically  infinite.  It  is  often  said  with 
great  unction  that  to  study  natural  science 
is  to  become  acquainted  with  the  works  of 
God,  while  to  study  language  is  to  spend 
our  time  over  the  works  of  man.  But  it  is 
hard  to  see  why  the  nest  of  the  bird  and  the 
cell  of  the  bee  are  more  divine,  or  can  do 
more  good  to  the  mind,  than  the  wonderful 
vessel  of  language  which  man  has  shaped 
and  fashioned  to  save  and  bear  down  the 
stream  of  time  for  the  advantage  of  those 
who  are  to  come  all  that  he  has  done  and 


206 


thought,  "that  nothing  be  lost."  In  lan- 
guage we  have,  as  has  been  said,  "  a  con- 
densed generalization  of  human  experience." 
What  could  be  a  more  valuable  tool  for  us  ? 
It  is  foolishness  to  compare  words  and  things 
to  the  intended  disadvantage  of  the  former. 
Words  are  things,  and  of  all  the  inventions 
which  man  has  painfully  thought  out,  they 
are  the  most  important  things.  To  language, 
then,  we  should  assign  the  first  and  the  larg- 
est part  in  the  school  course,  not  only  because 
of  its  unequalled  disciplinary  power,  but  be- 
cause of  the  fields  of  pleasure  and  of  further 
discipline  which  it  opens  up.  As  to  which 
language  we  should  take  first,  after  the 
vernacular  has  been  in  some  measure  ac- 
quired, for  disciplinary  purposes,  "that 
would  be  most  successful  which  is  in  its 
idiom  most  remote  from  the  reader's  own, 
and  in  its  literature  most  rich  and  varied." 
This  is,  of  course,  the  Latin,*  which,  in  the 
hands  of  a  skilful  teacher,  will  do  more  in 
the  way  of  discipline  and  of  development, 
even  for  little  girls  of  nine  or  ten,  than  any 
other  subject,  while  at  the  same  time  it  af- 

*  "Both  Latin  and  German  are  at  a  stage  in  which 
structure  is  more  exposed  to  view  than  it  is  in  the  ma- 
turer  languages  of  Greek  and  French."— Carte's  English 
Prose,  p.  508. 


fords  so  much  solid  enjoyment  that  under 
such  circumstances  the  Latin  lesson  is  the 
last  one  which  they  would  miss,  and  that 
for  which  they  will  beg  to  be  allowed  to 
come  to  school,  be  the  weather  never  so 
stormy.  With  a  year's  Latin  taught  in  this 
way,  all  paths  are  open.  French  builds  it- 
self on  it,  and  comparisons  between  the  idi- 
oms of  the  three  languages  offer  unlimited 
advantages  for  all  sorts  of  perceptions,  and 
for  the  training  of  the  growing  judgment. 
When  by-aud-by  German  is  added,  these  op- 
portunities are  still  more  enlarged.  But  by 
that  time  the  girl  is  reading  with  facility 
difficult  French  constructions,  and  her  Eng- 
lish is  so  well  in  hand  that  she  may  with 
advantage  be  allowed  to  drop  her  Latin  (if, 
indeed,  she  do  not  beg  to  be  allowed  to  con- 
tinue it  for  her  own  pleasure).  When  such 
a  result  is  reached,  we  may  feel  measurably 
satisfied.  There  is  no  more  valuable  train- 
ing than  translation,  by  which  I  do  not  mean 
substituting  one  word  for  another,  but  the 
"  reducing  of  the  actual  to  fluidity  by  break- 
ing up  its  literal  sequence,"  and  then  crys- 
tallizing it  again  in  another  idiom.  There 
is  no  school  task  more  valuable  in  inducing 
the  state  of  mind  which  suspends  the  judg- 
ment, waiting  till  all  the  circumstances 


208 


which  can  by  any  possibility  bear -upon  its 
conclusion  have  been  fairly  recognized  and 
weighed  —  a  habit  of  rniud  which  is  one 
of  the  highest  results  of  education.  It  is 
impossible  here  to  do  more  than  to  hint  at 
the  possibilities  of  the  different  lines  of 
study  in  aesthetics,  history,  and  literature. 
But  I  should  say  all  in  one  word  in  saying 
that  the  main  object  oTf  all  teaching  in  a  pri- 
vate school  for  girls  should  be  disciplinary, 
and  tbat  the  proportion  in  which  different 
studies  are  able  to  serve  this  end  should  de- 
cide the  relative  amount  of  time  given  to 
them.  The  order  in  which  they  should  be 
taken  up  must  be  decided  not  only  by  their 
relative  dependence,  but  by  the  mental  read- 
iness of  the  pupil.  To  decide  this  is  the 
function  of  the  teacher,  and  her  diagnosis 
must  shape  the  prescription.  There  is,  how- 
ever, one  more  consideration  of  prime  im- 
portance— the  mental  advance  should  be  al- 
ways along  the  whole  line  at  once.  I  mean 
by  this  that  there  should  never  be  a  time  in 
the  girl's  whole  school  course  when  she  is 
not  employed  at  the  same  time  in  all  the 
different  departments  of  human  acquisition, 
if  her  culture  is  to  be  in  any  degree  worthy 
of  the  name.  She  should  not  be  allowed 
to  spend  much  time  on  arithmetic  and  al- 


209 


most  none  on  language ;  neither  should  she 
study  even  language  to  the  exclusion  of  his- 
tory or  natural  science.  Every  branch  of 
human  knowledge  should  supplement,  con- 
firm, and  support  the  others.  That  is  a  poor 
school  where  the  pupil  does  not  find  that 
nothing  can  exist  apart  from  other  things, 
and  where,  through  the  mutual  understand- 
ing and  constant  harmony  of  the  teachers, 
she  does  not  find  the  same  persistent  thoughts 
corning  up  in  all  the  lessons.  In  no  other 
way  can  her  work  be  rendered  a  whole  to 
her,  and  if  it  be  not  so,  it  will  be  of  little 
use,  as  it  will  certainly  give  her  no  pleasure. 
When  we  hear  the  girls  in  recess  discussing 
some  point  in  a  lesson  instead  of  dress  and 
the  theatre  celebrities,  we  know  that  the 
first  step  has  been  gained — that  of  creating 
interest  and  of  making  knowledge  for  itself 
an  object  of  desire.  Till  this  has  been  done, 
nothing  has  been  done. 

The  work  of  the  school  should  be  by  rec- 
itations, and  not  by  lectures  ;  and  a  recita- 
tion does  not  consist  in  asking  questions  and 
receiving  answers  which  have  been  learned 
beforehand,  as  many  seem  to  think.  In  or- 
der to  show  what  it  really  is  in  the  mind 
and  purpose  of  the  modern  teacher,  I  may 
quote  from  an  article  in  a  Journal  of  Educa- 


210 


tion.  It  comes,  as  most  of  the  new  life  in 
the  profession  does  come,  from  the  West — 
from  S.  S.  Park,  of  St.  Cloud,  Minnesota. 
"  We  may  roughly  define  the  act  of  reciting 
as  that  mode  of  the  pupil's  thinking  which 
is  under  the  systematic  and  continuous  di- 
rection of  the  teacher's  superior  insight  and 
skill.  The  teacher  carries  on  a  train  of 
thought  by  means  of  which  she  applies 
means  to  stimulate  the  pupil  to  act  this  way 
or  that,  as  she  may  propose.  The  pupil  ex- 
ercises her  power  of  thought  under  the  guid- 
ance of  the  teacher.  The  function  of  the 
teacher  is  intellectual  stimulation  and  di- 
rection j  that  of  the  pupil  is  free  exercise  of 
her  powers,  receiving  aid  only  when  she  can- 
not go  forward  by  herself.  The  subject  is 
a  series  of  symbols  and  ideas  independent  of 
teacher  and  pupil,  which  both  translate  into 
intelligent  insight  into  some  phase  of  life 
and  its  conditions  and  results.  The  teacher 
rethinks  her  own  thinking  in  the  light  of 
the  expression  her  pupil  gives  to  the  idea 
she  is  seeking  to  master.  Double  conscious- 
ness furnishes  the  intelligent  condition  for 
action  upon  the  pupil.  Second,  the  teaching 
act  consists  in  directing  the  pupil's  attention 
so  that  she  recombines  ideas  already  in  her 
thought,  and  thus  suggests  new  coucep- 


211 


tions."  In  other  words,  the  object  of  a  rec- 
itation is  not  so  much  to  find  out  what  the 
girl  knows  as  to  make  her  think,  and  lead 
her  into  right  ways  of  thinking,  and  in 
every  recitation  the  teacher  should  always 
be  clear  in  her  own  mind  as  to  just  what 
she  wants  to  accomplish  in  that  particular 
hour,  and  aim  straight  for  it  every  minute — 
as  Goethe  says,  "  directly  if  in  favorable  cir- 
cumstances, but  if  in  unfavorable  by  circuit- 
ous paths,  in  which,  however,  we  are  always 
approaching  the  direct  path."  It  will  be 
noticed  that,  as  I  have  said  before,  the 
teacher's  mind  must  always  dominate,  and 
also  that  there  can  be  no  recitation,  properly 
so  called,  which  does  not  essentially  consist 
in  the  play  of  thought  continually  going  on 
between  teacher  and  taught.  It  is  this 
which  gives  charm  to  the  work,  and  lends 
to  it  fascinating  interest,  no  matter  how 
often  one  may  teach  a  subject ;  for  though 
the  subject  may  remain  somewhat  the  same, 
110  one  of  the  other  two  factors  'can  be  the 
same  at  any  two  times.  The  combinations 
are  infinite. 

Much  has  been  said  lately  of  the  neces- 
sity of  thoroughness  in  girls'  schools.  In 
the  abstract  meaning  of  the  word  there  can 
be  no  such  thing  as  thoroughness  with  a 


212 


child;  her  kuo w ledge,  from  the  very  nature 
of  the  case,  must  be  fragmentary,  and  there- 
fore lacking  in  thoroughness.  If  her  teach- 
ing is  to  consist,  as  in  old-time  schools,  of 
pages  of  the  dictionary  learned  by  heart,  or 
simply  of  arithmetical  rules  and  algebraic 
formulae,  she  might  perhaps  be  thorough  in 
those,  but  no  knowledge  can  be  considered 
"  thorough  "in  the  proper  sense  which  is 
not  a  part  of  a  wrhole.  It  is  in  the  gradual 
approximation  to  some  degree  of  wholeness 
that  the  interest  of  the  school-days — when 
they  have  any  interest — must  consist,  and 
we  shall  wander  widely  from  the  path  of 
any  reasonable  thoroughness  by  narrowing 
the  number  of  studies  to  two  or  three,  and 
holding  the  girl  strictly  to  these  for  a  year. 
It  is  more  our  duty  to  open  various  paths, 
the  more  the  better.  The  situation  of  a 
place  can  be  determined  only  when  we  have 
its  latitude  as  well  as  its  longitude  ;  to  de- 
termine the  location  of  so  simple  a  thing  as 
a  point  we  must  have  at  least  two  lines ;  and 
in  the  domain  of -live  knowledge  a  fact  is 
securely  grasped  by  the  mind  only  when  it 
lies  where  many  lines  meet.  The  woman 
teacher  never  forgets  the  possible  necessity 
for  the  future  woman  and  the  head  of  a 
family  to  have  some  place  of  refuge  to  which 


she  can  escape  out  of  the  wearying  and  pul- 
verizing details  scarcely  to  be  avoided  by 
her,  if  the  home  is  to  be  comfortable  for 
others,  and  she  seeks  to  open  all  the  paths 
of  interest  possible.  She  is  more  concerned 
to  do  this  and  to  lay  foundations  for  future 
work  than  to  build  very  high  for  the  pres- 
ent. Indeed  it  is  not  for  the  present  that 
she  works  at  all. 

All  teaching  in  the  modern  school-room 
must  be  comparative,  and  it  cannot  be  so  if 
we  have  nothing  to  compare.  The  unity  of 
the  school  must  never  be  destroyed  by  divid- 
ing it  into  departments,  for  in  so  doing  we 
sacrifice  the  opportunity  for  comparison  iu 
a  higher  sense.  And  always  it  is  the  class 
that  must  be  looked  out  for  more  than  the 
individual,  always  the  whole  school  more 
than  the  class.  It  is  only  iu  this  way  that 
the  individual  can  be  cared  for.  Human 
society  must  be  content  to  work  on  the  in- 
dividual not  immediately  but  mediately, 
and  the  teacher  is  not  freed  from  this  neces- 
sity iu  the  small  society  to  which  she  must 
be  a  minor  providence. 

I  can  do  no  more  here  than  to  point  out 
some  of  the  conditious  of  the  girls'  private 
school  in  our  large  cities,  and  briefly  to  hint 
at  its  possibilities.  It  must  always  hold 


2U 


fast  to  the  principle  that  the  development 
of  moral  character  is  its  highest,  and  indeed 
we  might  say  its  only  aim.  But  to  secure 
this,  it  must  always  cultivate  inner  freedom 
— "  the  agreement  of  the  will  with  its  own 
law-giving  judgment."  The  school  which 
puts  such  a  motived  force  into  the  charac- 
ters of  its  girls  that  they  cannot  lose  it  in 
all  their  after  lives — the  school,  the  memory 
of  which  they  can  never  escape,  and  whose 
stamp  they  can  never  efface,  whose  aid  is 
sure  to  come  up  strongest  whenever  need  is 
sorest — that  school,  the  thought  of  which  is 
always  followed  by  "a  great  wave  of  grati- 
tude and  love,"  is  the  only  one  that  has  done 
its  work. 


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